#Review - Heart of Thorns by Bree Barton #YA #Fantasy

Series: Heart of Thorns # 1
Format: Hardcover, 464 pages
Release Date: July 31, 2018
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Source: Library
Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy

Mia Rose wants only one thing: revenge against the Gwyrach—feared, reviled, and magical women—who killed her mother. After years training under her father’s infamous Hunters, Mia is ready. She will scour the four kingdoms, find her mother’s murderer, and enact the Hunters’ Creed: heart for a heart, life for a life.

But when Mia is thrust into the last role she ever wanted—promised wife to the future king—she plots a daring escape. On her wedding night, Mia discovers something she never imagined: She may be a Huntress, but she’s also a Gwyrach. As the truth comes to light, Mia must untangle the secrets of her own past. Now if she wants to survive, Mia must learn to trust her heart . . . even if it kills her.

"Heart for a heart, life for a life."

Heart of Thorns is the first installment in author Bree Barton's Heart of Thorns series. This is a world that is separated into four Kingdoms. River, Glass, Snow, and Fire. 17-year old Mia Rose lives in the River Kingdom. She wants one thing out life; she wants to be the one to kill the Gwyrach that killed her mother and set her on her own path to becoming a Circle of the Hunt Hunter like her own father who trained her for the past 3 years. However, in this world, women are rarely given any say in whom they marry. 

In this world, some women have powers where they can manipulate flesh, bones, breath, and blood, and this has been turned into a way for men to view them as demons, which they call the Gwyrach. If a woman is even suspected of being a Gwyrach, they’re put to death and their amputated hand is hung in the King’s gruesome ‘Hall of Hands.’ All women are thus required to wear gloves at all times because any woman might be a Gwyrach. Mia doesn't want to marry the King's son. She wants to follow in her fathers footsteps and hunt Gwyrach. 

In fact, she yearns to escape the Royal Castle with her sister Angelyne where she is surveyed like a specimen instead of a human being. But, her father made an unbreakable promise to the King who isn't someone to mess around with and her sister isn't ready to leave. On the cusp of marrying Prince Quin, a brazen attack occurs which leads Mia in discovering that she's exactly the thing she's been taught to hate the most. A large portion of the book is her & Quin fleeing from the River Kingdom and finding out more about herself and her family along the way. 

Mia gets direction from a magical journal written by her mother that will lead them to a refuge. As Mia learns about herself and her mother, she finds herself lured back to the Castle where things really take a shocking twist. There is death, betrayal, her own sisters surprises, and Mia's choice which ends on a cliffhanger. Of course it does! Quin is one of the positive's for me in this story. He has his own ideas of how things should be done, and isn't a fan of what his own father has done to women. 

Will I read the sequel? Most likely yes due to the fact that I want to see where the rest of the series leads Mia, and Quin, as well as other characters who we meet along the way.

Amazon | Audible | Barnes & Noble | Kobo