ARC Review: Snow White Reimagined

Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher

Publication Date: August 19, 2025

Summary from NetGalley:

ARC provided by Tor Publishing Group via Netgalley for an honest review.

Confession:

While I very much enjoyed this reimagining of the Snow White fairy tale, that also has some elements of Alice Through the Looking Glass, I did find it to be very slow moving and I am sorry to say a bit boring at times. I loved the main character and the setting and even the story, it just needed to be faster paced to truly make it a wonderful read.

Anja is not your typical reluctant heroine. She is middle aged, she is not looking to change her life in any way, and she does struggle with the social niceties. She is also of a larger stature, which is mentioned often, but she is very comfortable with that. Her mind is also very preoccupied with poisons and plants and when she is nervous she often will spout interesting facts about them. I really liked her, but I also was a bit bored stuck in her head the whole book. I did love her determination to discover what was wrong with Snow, and her delight when she discovers the secret world that is behind Snow’s affliction.

Lots of secondary characters that I enjoyed, but my favorite was Grayling, the obnoxious and imperious cat. The author does a great job with his personality. He reminds me of a cat I once had that hated to love me. I do think that he was a bit more than a cat and would have loved a bit more backstory on his life. He does help Anja quite a bit, even when he doesn’t want to.

I really liked the little bit of romance that starts with Anja’s guard, Javier. Javier was a great character. He is gruff and grumpy, but he totally is willing to believe that there is magic in the world, something Anja struggled with. I wasn’t expecting the romance, but it worked well in the story and it did not overwhelm it.

The desert setting was interesting as was the mirror world. There were some creepy creatures in that world that made my skin crawl, although I did find how they came to exist an interesting part of the story. My only real issue with the book on the whole was the very slow pacing for the majority of the story. It does pick up at the end as Anja tries to save Snow, but that didn’t quite make up for the rest of the story.

Overall this was a very interesting and well done retelling of this particular fairytale. I loved the mystery and how Anja went about figuring out what was wrong with Snow. I just wished the pacing had been faster and that there was maybe a bit less of Anja ruminating about poisons.