Book Review: Mountains Made of Glass

I finished the second book on my Halloween-y tbr a few days ago, Mountains Made of Glass, by Scarlett St. Clair and I loved it!

Mountains Made of Glass is a dark fairytale retelling novella, but it’s not terribly dark. If you’re familiar with Grimm fairytales, this novella is based on different fairytales, myths, and legends including those by the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Anderson and those can be pretty dark.

This book follows Gesela, a young woman with some fae blood, who lives in a village that is cursed. People in the village have to take turns doing tasks to try to break the curse and most of them die doing it because something will happen to them afterwards as a sort of punishment for breaking the curse. One day Gesela is told it’s her turn and the well has dried up. There is a toad at the bottom of the well and she must kill it so the village can have water again.

Gesela ends up getting pushed down the well and the toad leads her to safety, but then the toad and her end up in a little scuffle and she ends up killing the toad even though she didn’t mean to. She then finds out the toad was an Elven Prince and his brothers come to curse her. There are 7 brothers and they send her to their youngest brother who is cursed. She must spend six years with the 7th brother as his prisoner.

When she arrives at the 7th brother’s castle in the Enchanted Forest, she learns they call him Casamir, but that’s not his true name. If she can learn his true name within a week, she can go free. What she doesn’t know is that Casamir’s curse requires someone to speak his name with love or else he will forget his name and he will fade out of existence.

This novella was so good! I was hooked from beginning to end. It’s not scary although it is marketed as horror. There is some blood and gruesome things, but on par with fairytales. I don’t like horror or scary things and I had no issues with this so if you’re like me then don’t worry about it being labeled as horror. It’s actually a fun read and has some funny moments.

I love Gesela and Casamir and I can’t wait for the rest of the novellas to come out (one for each brother)!

Read this if you want a dark fairytale retelling, spicy fantasy romance with the enemies to lovers and forced proximity tropes.