A Hunger of Thorns by Lili Wilkinson

Today I am bringing you a review of A Hunger of Thorns by Lili Wilkinson. This review is part of the TBR & Beyond Tours blog tour. Thank you to Lili Wilkinson and TBR & Beyond Tours for allowing me to be a part of this tour.

I received this book for free from NetGalley to facilitate my review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Be swept away by a lush, witchy tale about forbidden magic and missing girls who don't need handsome princes to rescue them. Perfect for fans of The Hazel Wood.

Maude is the daughter of witches. She spent her childhood running wild with her best friend, Odette, weaving stories of girls who slayed dragons and saved princes. Then Maude grew up and lost her magic—and her best friend.

These days, magic is toothless, reduced to glamour patches and psychic energy drinks found in supermarkets and shopping malls. Odette has always hungered for forbidden, dangerous magic, and two weeks ago she went searching for it. Now she’s missing, and everyone says she’s dead. Everyone except Maude.

Storytelling has always been Maude’s gift, so she knows all about girls who get lost in the woods. She’s sure she can find Odette inside the ruins of Sicklehurst, an abandoned power plant built over an ancient magical forest—a place nobody else seems to remember is there. The danger is, no one knows what remains inside Sicklehurst, either. And every good story is sure to have a monster.

CW: graphic depictions of gore, violence, death

Do you ever pick up a book thinking it’s going to be amazing and then realize part way through that the book is good, but not as amazing as you’d thought it would be? That’s kind of what I got with A Hunger of Thorns. Let me explain…

When I first started looking at A Hunger of Thorns, I was pulled in by the description and by the cover. The cover is absolutely gorgeous. I also love the title. But when I started reading the book it just wasn’t quite the book I thought it was going to be.

For one, I don’t like Odette – at all. She just makes me think of an absolutely spoiled brat who has to have her way no matter what. She wants magic and she’s going to get it no matter what. Just not my type of character.

Maude… well, my relationship with her as a character is complicated. I like her, but I also don’t like her. She mentions the loss of her magic quite often. I get that she’s a witch without magic, but I sometimes felt like she mentioned it too often.

I like the world in this book and would like to see more of the world itself. Perhaps with different characters. Although, after reading the ending, I would like to see these characters all grown up. After all, they are teenagers in the book.

The story and plot are great. I just had trouble reading the book and staying with it. I’m wondering if it is a matter of right book, wrong time, because normally if I’m having trouble staying with a book, it is because I don’t like the content of the book. But that wasn’t the case here.

I gave the book 3.5 stars because like I said, the book is good, it just wasn’t my cup of tea – at least right now. Perhaps later I will revisit the book and it will be more to my liking.

About Lili Wilkinson

Lili Wilkinson is the award-winning author of eighteen books for young people, including The Erasure Initiative and After the Lights Go Out. Lili has a PhD from the University of Melbourne, and is a passionate advocate for YA and the young people who read it, establishing the Inky Awards at the Centre for Youth Literature, State Library of Victoria. Her latest book is A Hunger of Thorns.

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