Book Review: "Bitterthorn" by Kat Dunn

“Misery was a creeping thing, like the dew settling on grass or the cold fingers of frost meeting me in my bed at night and crackling the insides of my windows. I had longed to be left alone, to escape the lie of my family, only to discover this was different kind of poison. Slow acting, but lethal. At first it numbed me, pleasure leaching from my days like a summer leaf draining of sap to greet the autumn. Then loneliness came, a creeping oily stain that stopped me from enjoying it at all."

This was a book I had a) never heard of by b) an author I had never heard of and c) was not on my Amazon Reccomendations. I actually found out about it from GoodReads. No, I don't have a GoodReads account but instead I found it whilst searching up quotations for another book. It looked sort of interesting but honestly, from the very first chapter I knew it was going to fall short. The opening chapter was very, very boring. Written like a strangely outdated YA Fantasy novel, the darkness of this book does not turn interesting at any point whatsoever. Apart from revealing way too much by the end of Chapter 1, this book does not really give us much suspense or tension. Prepare for a rant.

Let's first skip over that weird romance that gets started way too quickly even though the book slow-burned things for a long time. It felt badly paced. Let's instead move on to the intended atmosphere of 19th century fantasy which just did not feel like anything actually 19th century fantasy to me. The book kept going towards more modern language, not really using as much atmospheric build that would be more appropriate of a 19th century novel and the characters were more than often, boring and hollow. It was definitely not a dark fantasy 19th century read but instead read a bit too much like 19th century fan fiction.

I did not root for the protagonist at all. Mina seems like one of those weird 'dark academia' gen z kids that has too much time to dip into everything rather than actually having any real common sense or intelligence. She is a bit too whiny for my tastes and she does not fit in with the whole 'strong heroine' thing that the writer is clearly trying to do. Everything Mina does is either a protagonist who is trying too hard or someone who is so boring that I honestly do not care to read about her. It was definitely a huge miss for me.

When it came to the settings, I thought that because of the way the book was being sold to me it would be all folklore and magic but instead it was all clichés and uninspiring atmospheres. There was not much atmosphere besides the forests and plants and then that magical castle. I'm not going to lie when I say this - either do something different with a magical castle or leave it out entirely; don't write it in and then have it do the exact same thing that everyone has seen a billion times. No spoilers though, so I won't say anything more about it.

Another thing about the protagonist though: she is not just a cliché but as the book goes on, she becomes more and more insufferable. I understand she is supposed to be a deep and meaningful misunderstood soul, but honestly, she just comes across as whiny and corny as hell. It doesn't make for a great fantasy protagonist. Instead, it makes for a really dry novel that drags even when at the end where all the tension is supposed to release. It really doesn't. There was no tension.

All in all, this is not a book I would pick up again though I would like to see what else the author has done because I don't want to write them off because of one bad book. I was honestly not in any mind about this when I picked it up but I'm really glad I wasn't because I would have been a lot more disappointed than I am now.