Asher Todd is a witch. One with a mission-- to infiltrate her dead mother's family home and bring her mother back to life. She arrives as a governess to her three cousins, wearing a face that's not her own. Though cunning and magic, she creates a place for herself among the inhabitants of the estate so she can set her plan in motion.

Between Asher's magic and the lore of the town she now calls home-- lore that speaks of wolves who can wear the skins of humans-- the world of Path of Thorns is rich with hidden mysteries. I loved how the magic was woven through the story, and how it was an unquestioned but unaccepted part of life.
The voice of the story was sweeping and reminded me of some of the classics-- it has a quality that is somehow both timeless and rooted in the past.
Path of Thorns is a stunning story of family, magic, and the things we do because of a path we were set on before we were even born.

Before I lay out my thoughts on "The Path of Thorns," I'll call out that this is absolutely a book meant to be read alongside a crackling fire on a stormy October evening with a hot mug of coffee in hand...not on a cruise ship passing through the Caribbean in the heart of a summer heat wave. Nonetheless, I felt very present reading this and unfortunately felt that it was very middle-of-the-road for me and ultimately forgettable.

Asher Todd has come to the Morwood Estate to act as governess to the three Morwood children. Amidst the imposing, sprawling grounds of Morwood is a mysterious cast of characters--ranging from the well-intentioned house staff to the openly-hostile Mr. Morwood--that give the story a layer of murkiness that I never seemed to be able to clearly see through.

"The Path of Thorns" is deeply-atmospheric and beautifully written; what reduced this down to a neutral 3-star read were two things: One, the steady slow burn that bored me to yawns multiple times throughout, and two, some random, out-of-place moments of strangeness in the plot that would occasionally raise their heads then retreat into the background. Head this read more like a true gothic fantasy and less like a hybrid between that and a dark-in-a-strange-way fairytale, I probably would have enjoyed it more. By the end, I realized I found every character--Asher included--completely unlikeable and lacking the air of mystery that the story itself seemed to hold.

If your a lover of gothic fantasy, hints of horror, witchcraft and deep dark family secrets than this book is for you.

Step into Asher Todd’s world and travel to a faraway estate.

What I most appreciated about The Path of Thorns is the slow unravelling of several mysteries that came together well in the end and left me appreciating the complexity of everything that happened. I am a sucker for a gothic atmosphere, fairytale-like story, creepy mansion setting, and all that is fantasy, and while there was a lot going on in this book, it was jampacked with fun adventures and mishaps. Asher Todd, the protagonist with a mission she hides from the reader for a good portion of the novel, adds a bit of unreliability as the narrator; which I appreciated as it helped add mystery and danger to the novel. I am not usually a fan of morally-grey characters, so Asher and her crusade made me hesitant; yet, her well-developed character, light romance, and strength easily won me to her side.

The beginning dragged on for me a bit and I would have liked either more fantasy elements or deeper description/backstory of her abilities, but what I most struggled with in the novel were Asher's choices. I liked her as a character and she was seemingly intelligent; yet, the amount of foolish decisions she made without thinking through consequences became repetitive and slowed the plot down.

I've also read the author's novel, All the Murmuring Bones, and while I enjoyed that one a tiny bit more, this was a fun, worthwhile read with an ending that is unsuspecting yet satisfying, even if it's not quite happily ever after. Thank you Titan Books and NetGalley for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Titan and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy on exchange for an honest review!

CWs: murder, graphic violence, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, child abuse, parent death, gore, animal cruelty and death, graphic abortion, grief, vomit
***
Woof (pun intended), that’s a lot of trigger warnings!

This is a well crafted and imaginative story with interesting magic, vivid imagery, and a whole lot of disturbing family dynamics. I can’t say I enjoyed reading it, because it totally grossed me out the majority of the time, but I would imagine people who do enjoy horror and dark, twisted fairy tales would find it quite compelling. I’m not sure what I expected, but the cover led me to believe that the fairy tale element would be a little more pronounced - a whimsical and somewhat twisted and spooky tale perhaps, rather than extremely disturbing. Oops, my b!

Spoiler-free synopsis: Asher Todd is posing as governess to the Morwood children to infiltrate their ancestral (and deeply spooky) manor house full of secrets, repressed shame, and a thoroughly dysfunctional family. The Morwoods, their household staff, and the village the grange is responsible for come to respect and rely on Asher - who’s plotting a grand act of revenge and retribution upon the household that no one sees coming. Creepy bedtime stories, ghosts, body horror and the grossest healing magic imaginable abound.

This book definitely has a lot going for it, especially for the right audience. I liked the weaving of folklore and fairy tale into the narrative, and I could have used more of it. The tales and storybook interludes were very impactful thematically.

There were also a number of elements that bothered me and that took away from my enjoyment. Listen, do we need THAT MANY stranglings? Switch it up, bestie. There are other ways to do gendered violence. Also, as a romance reader, I hate when a couple makes absolutely no sense. Asher and her love interest had no lead up or reason to like each other, it was just there. We get two queer characters, one of them minor to the plot and the other very pivotal to the plot but only insofar as she is never actually heard from but is very violently killed to advance one plot point. Hrmmm.

Not my favourite, but Slatter certainly writes horrible, twisted people well, and really makes the ‘gross’ jump off the page!

I wanted to like this so bad but sadly it was not fir me. I wanted to try something new, something outside of my comfort zone. I could not get into the story, connect with the characters, and I found myself board, waiting for it to be over.


Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

Gothic atmosphere and darkly woven story makes A Path of Thorns worthy of your fall TBR.

You'll follow Asher Todd as she travels to a remote estate and begins a position as governess to three young children. There you will meet a dysfunctional family,weary townsfolk, and a handful of faithful servants as you uncover the complicated past of Morewood Manor. There is a mystery afoot in this fog laden tarn town and it blurs the line between the living and the dead.

Like many gothic novels the constant feeling of dread embedded in each page really shines here. Even in it's slower moments, A Path of Thorns, succeeded in making me feel uneasy. While this story might not do it for intense horror readers or thrill seekers I think it will find it's audience with atmosphere junkies and grim-dark lovers alike.

I sincerely think that consuming this story on grey gloomy days makes it even better!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this advanced reader copy

Things I loved about this book:
- Magic. Magic is always fun.
- Folktales
- Witchcraft
- Mysterious governess
- Secrets and little clues and foreshadowing sprinkled throughout

Things I did not love about this book:
- Girl, you are surrounded by some real toxic people, you need to STAHP.
- No, really, I don't understand - just knock it off and run.
- The book had repetitive parts to the point that I almost DNF at 30ish percent. It was just going nowhere, but there was just enough to keep me going, and I'm glad I did. It ended up being an incredible book, but cut it down. It does not need to be this long. It ends up feeling like the author needed to hit a certain word count.

I really don't know what happened here - I loved Slatter's <strong>All the Murmuring Bones</strong>, and I finally read her collection <strong>Sourdough </strong>this year and adored that too. But I struggled with <strong>Bitterwood </strong>and <strong>Tallow-Wife</strong>, and now it seems that <strong>The Path of Thorns</strong> didn't work for me either. It struck me as incredibly dry and blunt, with a jerky, stop-and-start rhythm to the prose. Even the cover's promise of werewolves couldn't convince me to keep reading.

I might give it another go at some point - I don't really understand how I could enjoy Slatter's writing in two of her books but not the rest, so maybe it's just a wrong-book-wrong-time thing? - but for now I'm putting it aside.

The Path of Thorns, by A. G. Slatter, is a gothic tale of magic and betrayal, love and deceit, pain and loss.

Asher Todd, the new governess to the Morewood children, arrives at the family estate, and begins the trials of looking after children, while trying to dance around the family and it’s many dark deeds. She’ll learn each staff and family member, their flaws and secrets, and slowly build up the dark deed of her own. The one that drawn her here, after so many years.

For fans of dark fantasy, with extremely light gothic inspiration, this would be an excellent fit. It is a very slow burn, and the characters themselves are all fairly flawed. I wished for more fleshing out of some characters, more action, and a way to connect with Asher. The author leaves the ending opening to the possibility of another book, maybe more story and more details, to add to this rich world that Asher lives in. Solid three star read!

Asher Todd comes to Morwood to act as governess to the three children. The isolated manor is full of secrets, not least of which are the ones Asher brought herself. A gothic tale of magic, trauma, and family burdens.

This novel was engaging from the opening to the end. There was beautiful worldbuilding, and a haunting atmosphere. Asher was an interesting character, and as her story unfolds, with her past slowly revealed, her motivations become clearer while other mysteries are introduced.

This was just what I needed as a cold weather read. If you enjoy a gothic tale with tension and mystery, you should absolutely give the Path of Thorns a read.

Absolutely lush story in the spirit of old fairy tales and Victorian gothic. The writing is lyrical, action engaging and it was a pleasure to read every sentence. The characters are well established and live on (and off) the page.

'The Path of Thorns' tells the story of Asher Todd, new governess at Morwood Manor who brings with her a secret past, and a task to right a wrong. But Asher is linked to the inhabitants of Morwood in ways no one could expect and her time in the Manor will impact all who meet her in ways they will not anticipate.

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to review this book. I will be purchasing a copy to keep and read again.

“You poor girl, all alone in the world,’ she says sadly.
I smile. ‘There are many of us; we make our way well enough. We have our dreams and our drives. We will get what we desire, never fear.”

THE PATH OF THORNS
Thank you, NetGalley, A.G. Slatter, and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book. It releases on June 28th, 2022.

The Path of Thorns by A.G. Slatter is quite a unique novel. Asher Todd has been hired as a governess to a family on an estate through the forest. This family has some dark secrets, but Asher Todd has secrets of her own. There is Luther Morwood and his wife, Luther’s mother-Leonora, the three children, and the staff. The groundskeeper is not exactly human and there is a ghost that stalks the halls. What other secrets does this gothic estate hold?

I was not sure about this book at first. The first 20% sets up the gothic atmosphere but it is rather slow. I could not tell where the book was headed. There are quite a few fairytale hints woven into the story. I originally thought that this book would go on a fairytale retelling track. There are Little Red Riding Hood themes but it was not a retelling. But then there is a shift and this develops into a horror novel.

That shift is wild! I started to predict some aspects regarding Asher but that ending kept me on my toes. I am not sure if everything comes together cohesively but there are moments that really screamed gothic and I was impressed with the story’s uniqueness. But just a heads up, there are some parts that will have you freaking out!

The Path of Thorns is a story that weaves together a dysfunctional family, murder, witchcraft, wolves, a spooky country manor house, a little romance and some dark secrets. This is an atmospheric, gothic, modern fairytale. It has so many subtle layers that skilfully weave together and a delightfully morally grey heroine. The family dynamics and toxic friendships are so intriguing I could not look away. I loved the ride and highly recommend.

This is going to be a difficult book to review, for the simple reason that I don’t believe I have ever once read a book where the author played their cards so close to their chest. It was a very atmospheric book, and a very dark one. If you liked Slatter’s *All the Murmuring Bones* you’ll probably like this as well, because they deal with similar themes and have a very similar feel.

The book begins with our protagonist - I won’t call her the hero - Asher Todd arriving at the remote estate of the Morwood family, where she’s to take up a post as governess. She’s got something in her carpet bag that she’s terrified someone will discover. And that’s about all I’m prepared to say. Who is she, really? Where is she from, and what’s her history? Why is she really at the Morwood estate? What is she afraid of, and what is she trying to do? You get answers to all of those questions - actually, looking back, I can’t really think of any unanswered questions - but the answers will be spun out slowly, deliberately, and often very subtly. This is a book you’ll want to be able to pay close attention to.

There’s a great deal of thematic overlap with *All the Murmuring Bones*, in addition to the similar feel. One of the big themes here is how domestic abuse can affect a person, especially how the abuser can continue to exercise a form of “control” even when they are well out of the picture. Here, the survivors often aren’t even aware they’re shaping their behavior to placate someone who can’t be placated (and in some cases here isn’t even to be placated or provoked at all). The other big theme, and I would argue the primary one, is how dehumanizing discrimination can be. The one on display here is sexism, but the lessons work equally well for any kind of bigotry. This world that Asher Todd moves in is highly stratified according to class and gender both; Asher is very aware of the privileges retained by her “betters” and the injustice that automatically puts her on a lower tier by simply being born a woman. It doesn’t matter that Asher is determined, and clever, and caring, and very much cleverer than most; she is a woman, and that is the trait that defines her. Discrimination like this erases identity and renders efforts to improve one’s self futile. It destroys personhood, and Slatter has done a brilliant job of expressing that.

Don’t read this book lightly - I was warned going into it that it was a very dark book, and I was still caught by surprise. Some parts of it are distinctly challenging for me to read. But if you want to give this one a try, it’s well worth it.

Comes out June 28.

Bingo categories: Author Uses Initials; Anti-Hero; Author Uses Initials; Published in 2022; Shapeshifters; Family Matters [Hard Mode]

Content warnings: sexual assault; domestic violence; animal death.

While this isn’t an easy or comforting read, there was something I found very compelling about Asher Todd’s story and the way we discover her motives.
An atmospheric, gothic tale with fairy tales woven through, this will have a lot of meaning for people who connect with the sense of rage and injustice we see play out.
I enjoyed the writing style, even if it felt that things were dragged out times, and while I didn’t connect fully with the romance subplot, overall I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

Witches, wolf shifters, ghosts, and murder!! All are pieces I find very compelling. But for me, Thorns moved at such a slow pace, and the elements of mystery, magic, and fairytale lore never seemed to mesh together, that the promise of danger and excitement could never really take hold.

I really enjoyed this book! It gripped me right from the beginning, throwing readers into the action right away, not knowing what is happening or who anyone is. As the story continued, more and more questions arose, and I really liked the ending and felt that everything made sense and happened for a reason.
I would not classify this as a horror, as nothing really frightening or creepy happens, but there are definitely some unsettling themes to the story. All of the characters, even the narrator we follow, are deeply flawed and not necessarily all good or all bad. I found that incredibly real, and helped me get into the book even more. I do love when the people aren't clearly black and white, hero and villain. The setting was just the right amount of creepy without feeling cliche.
I only had a few minor issues with the book. First, the middle really seemed to drag on and I felt like nothing was happening and I wasn't getting any answers. I also felt like the magic system wasn't as explained as it could have been, and it almost seemed like I was thrown into the book expected to already know how everything worked. Finally, the romance subplot popped up out of absolutely nowhere, and I wish that if it had been included at all, there would have been some build up to it other than "surprise now they are kissing even though for some reason they didn't like each other a chapter ago."
Overall a really unique, creepy story that kept me questioning what was going on up until the end.

It's Frankenstein with magic.

The Path of Thorns is at once gothic novel and revenge plot and family drama; a little bit of everything. It is not, however, a fairy tale.

This book starts off incredibly slowly; it took me weeks to get through the first half, and a day to get through the second. I went in expecting a macabre and mythical fairy tale kind of story, a little absurdist, along the lines of Angela Carter. What I got was Frankenstein with magic. That's not a bad thing: once I adjusted my expectations to the book I was reading, I immensely enjoyed it. Asher is a tragic, understandable, ruthless, desperate main character. Not a heroine, but a woman attempting to escape the vicious cycle of family trauma. Her struggle is well plotted out and revealed at a steady pace, and the use of first person narration allows the audience to see what is coming while she does not. The exploration of cycles of abuse is extremely well handled. The characters are interesting, the worldbuilding is intriguing and dark. I would have enjoyed a more thorough exploration of the magic system and the world itself - the ending does leave room for a sequel, though it would not be necessary at all.

Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot, but expectation and reality were two different spheres to begin with. 4/5

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4662673881

I loved this! A great, twisty gothic horror. I'd recommend this to fans of modern gothic à la MEXICAN GOTHIC, and anyone who likes old-school gothic stories like JANE EYRE or REBECCA or THE TURN OF THE SCREW.

I received an eARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.