The Girl with No Reflection is a swoony fantasy debut about betrayal. It’s about what lies we will tell to save our own skin and exactly who we will betray. My enjoyment of The Girl with No Reflection only grew as I continued to read. Keep reading this book review of The Girl with No Reflection for my full thoughts.
Summary
Princess Ying Yue believed in love…once upon a time.
Yet when she’s chosen to wed the crown prince, Ying’s dreams of a fairy tale marriage quickly fall apart. Her husband-to-be is cold and indifferent, confining Ying to her room for reasons he won’t explain. Worse still are the rumors that swirl around the imperial whispers of seven other royal brides who, after their own weddings, mysteriously disappeared.
Left alone with only her own reflection for company, Ying begins to see things. Strange things. Movements in the corners of her mirror. Colorful lights upon its surface. And when, on the eve of her wedding, she unwittingly tears open a gateway, she is pulled into a mirror world.
This realm is full of sentient reflections, including the enigmatic Mirror Prince. Unlike his real-world counterpart, the Mirror Prince is kind and compassionate, and before long Ying falls in love—the kind of love she always dreamed of.
But there is darkness in this new world, too.
It turns out the two worlds have a long and blood-soaked history, and Ying has a part to play in the future of them both. And the brides who came before Ying? By the time they discovered what their role was, it was already too late.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
The Girl with No Reflection begins by examining what happens when our ‘love story’ doesn’t turn out the way we thought. When all these dreams of love, of marriage, of a happy ending don’t pan out. With tension from the beginning between Ying and her prince, when she finds this mirror world she falls fast. It introduces itself with eerieness, like movement from the corner of our eyes. And she quickly finds out that nothing is as it seems. There are secrets in shadows.
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Ying can trust no one. Because if you can’t trust your own reflection in the mirror, how can you trust anyone else? The Girl with No Reflection has plenty of twists and turns. Moments where we aren’t sure when the other shoe will drop. She is dunked into a war between worlds with high stakes. I loved how The Girl with No Reflection explores who the true monsters are. And who will be the ‘monsters’ at the end. Swoony until the very end, this book delivers a little bit of everything.
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