Abstract
Reviewed by: Briar Girls by Rebecca Kim Wells Fiona Hartley-Kroeger Wells, Rebecca Kim Briar Girls. Simon, 2021 [352p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781534488427 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781534488441 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 9-12 Lena was cursed at birth by a witch: anyone she touches with her bare skin bursts into flame and dies. In hopes of escaping her constrained life and finding a way to break the curse, she follows a beautiful, mysteriously injured girl named Miranda into the Silence, a sinister forest beyond which is the Gather, a city where mages can do magic. Miranda, having failed in her mission to kill the princess sleeping at the top of a briar-covered tower, has soured on the evil mage-king she served, and Lena wants to trust her, but people (including Alaric, the unhappy, alluring servant of the witch who cursed Lena) keep advising her against it. As Lena searches for answers, her hunger for touch—possible, she learns, through a loophole in the curse—leads her to explore her sexuality, first with Alaric and then with Miranda. Her yearning for physicality and connection yields a sweetly angst-free love story, while she reacts to revelations about her parents’ decisions with understandable anger and resentment. A few plot elements are overly convenient, but there are solid emotional throughlines, and for readers whose criteria are “bisexual sex-positive fairy tale,” this is it. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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