The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass by Adan Jerreat-Poole

 Eli is a witch-made assassin, and for her failure is intolerable.  When an assignment goes wrong, she begins to question what she was taught about the two worlds she straddles and about herself.

In The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass, Eli feels like a very real teenage girl.  Her fears might be slightly different to those of human teens, but there is a craving for belonging, for love, fear of failure and and a fear of rejection- it just so happens that for Eli rejection would result in her destruction.  The humanity of an obviously inhuman character helps ground the magical elements of this story in reality, especially since the witch characters are so in human.  In fact, they're even unsettling!

The setting is fantastical and beautiful.  Jerreat-Poole obviously spent a lot of time world-building and the results are exactly what I wanted for a YA novel.

I also enjoyed Tav and Cam who feature as important secondary characters and was pleasantly surprised to find they were LGBTQ+ characters  After reading, I discovered that Jerreat-Poole identifies as non-binary and as such it makes sense that the LGBTQ+ representation found within the novel is done with sensitivity and accuracy.  I am so pleased that this representation is finding its way into fiction in a positive light!

My only criticism of the novel, and the reason I only gave three stars, is that at times I feel that there are plot gaps that don't entirely make sense.  A few times, I found myself re-reading a passage to see if I had missed something.  It is possible that I did, but I did find this little plot holes jarring at times.  

Nevertheless, this was a good read and I think that readers of books like: The House of Night Series, The Red Queen Series and Sarah J. Maas will enjoy it!