Bree Barton Books

Bree Barton is the author of the Heart of Thorns trilogy, published by Katherine Tegen Books at HarperCollins, plus the middle grade novel Zia Erases the World from Viking at Penguin Random House. Her books have been translated into several languages and published across a number of countries, and alongside writing she works as a speaker and workshop leader with schools, colleges, and nonprofits. She founded Rock 'n' Write, a program that combines dance and writing for young people, and that background in movement is visible in her prose, which has a physical, rhythmic quality that is rare in the category.

Heart of Thorns opens in a kingdom where only women can hold magic and where that magic is hunted. The Gwyrach can manipulate flesh, bone, breath, and blood, and Mia Rose has pledged her life to killing them because one of them killed her mother. Then her father announces an alliance with the royal family, Mia is put in a silk gown and marched toward a wedding she never agreed to, and she starts planning her escape. The premise is a straightforward feminist inversion, and Barton does not pretend otherwise, but the execution is much better than the setup suggests. The trilogy continues through Tears of Frost and concludes with Soul of Cinder.

What defines her writing is anger channelled cleanly. Barton is writing about bodily autonomy, arranged marriage, and the way societies pathologise women's power, and she never lets the fantasy premise soften the argument. Mia is prickly, wrong about most things at the start, and allowed to be genuinely unpleasant while she works it out. The romance is complicated by the fact that Mia's own beliefs are the main obstacle, which makes the enemies to lovers structure here feel earned rather than mechanical. There are also queer relationships woven through the trilogy that develop meaningfully across the three books rather than arriving as a late reveal.

Zia Erases the World is a complete change of register and possibly her best work. It is a middle grade novel about a girl living with depression, which she calls the Shadoom, who finds an old family dictionary containing a blue eraser shaped like an evil eye. When she erases words that remind her of the Shadoom, those things vanish from the world. It is funny, it is heartbreaking, and it handles childhood depression with more honesty than most adult fiction manages.

On heat, this is a 1 on our spice scale. Young adult, closed door, with tension carried through touch, proximity, and the constant threat that magic passes through skin. That last detail does a lot of work. In a world where a Gwyrach can kill through contact, every brush of a hand is loaded, and Barton exploits that relentlessly. Readers who want explicit scenes will not find them here. Readers who like forbidden love where the danger is literal will get a lot out of it.

Why she matters to a romantasy audience: Heart of Thorns sits in the lineage that runs from the older feminist fantasy tradition into the current wave, and it is a useful book for understanding how the genre got from there to here. It is also a good recommendation for younger readers or for anyone who wants the emotional shape of romantasy without the explicit content. Barton's work is a reminder that the genre's central fantasy is not really about the love interest. It is about a woman being allowed to be powerful without apologising, and she writes that directly.

Where to start: Heart of Thorns, then Tears of Frost, then Soul of Cinder, in order, because the trilogy builds one continuous arc and the later books reframe the first considerably. Be prepared for a first book that is more conventional than what follows. If the fantasy is not your thing, read Zia Erases the World on its own merits, particularly if you have a younger reader in your life or you want something short and sincere. Not sure whether her register suits you? Take the quiz and see whether closed-door young adult fantasy is where your taste actually sits.