The Forbidden Wish - Jessica Khoury

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"When Aladdin discovers Zahra's jinni lamp, Zahra is thrust back into a world she hasn't seen in hundreds of years - a world where magic is forbidden and Zahra's very existence is illegal. She must disguise herself to stay alive, using ancient shape-shifting magic, until her new master has selected his three wishes.

But when the King of the Jinn offers Zahra a chance to be free of her lamp forever, she seizes the opportunity - only to discover she is falling in love with Aladdin. When saving herself means betraying him, Zahra must decide once and for all: is winning her freedom worth losing her heart?

As time unravels and her enemies close in, Zahra finds herself suspended between danger and desire in this dazzling retelling of the Aladdin story from acclaimed author Jessica Khoury."

Have you ever had one of those moments where you're browsing for books and the stars align, guiding you to one you didn't know existed but that you have to have? That's how I found this book. Paperbacks & Frybread was having a sale, it happened to include a random, signed copy of this book, and as soon as I saw that it was an Aladdin retelling, I was sold. Now, in my perfect, idyllic dream world, it would be a queer Aladdin retelling...but aside from lacking that one aspect, this was pretty nice as far as retellings go.

For starters, I loved Zahra. How complicated she was, the way her history was woven into the story and revealed bit by bit, her tenacity and creativity...Zahra rocks. So does Caspida and her handmaidens. Aladdin was acceptable, but the women in this book were by far the best part. Honestly, the...I guess secondary conflict(?) with the vizier and his son was not super engaging to me, probably because it was alluded to but nothing was really done with it until it fully came to a head, but I would have read more of this book just to see Zahra, Caspida, and company be amazing some more. They were glorious. A revelation. Honestly, authors take note. Do we even need Aladdin? This could have been the queer retelling the world needs. (Joking, mostly. Sort of.)

Sorry, getting off track. In addition to the girl power, I enjoyed the world building that went into this book. We only got bits and pieces of it, but it was intriguing as hell! I would read so many more books about Zahra's history. And Caspida's rule. About how her handmaidens came to be her handmaidens. What I'm getting at, Jessica Khoury, is give me more books in this world. I will devour them like Cookie Monster. That's not to say this book is perfect - it definitely had some funky word choices at times and several pacing issues - but for me the good more than made up for the clunky. It was a delight. And now I want to watch Aladdin.

When You Wish Upon a Star - Elizabeth Lim

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight...so begins the wish that changes everything - for Geppetto, for the Blue Fairy, and for a little puppet named Pinocchio. The Blue Fairy isn't supposed to grant wishes in the small village of Pariva, but something about this one awakens some long-buried flicker within. Perhaps it's the hope she senses beneath the old man's loneliness.

Or maybe it's the fact that long ago, before she was the Blue Fairy, she was a young woman named Chiara from this very village, one with a simple wish: to help others find happiness. Her sister Ilaria always teased her for this, for she had big dreams to leave their sleepy village and become a world-renowned opera singer. The two were close, despite their differences. While Ilaria would give anything to have a fairy grant her wish, Chiara didn't believe in the lore for which their village was famous.

Forty years later, Chiara, now the Blue Fairy, defies the rules of magic to help an old friend. But she's discovered by the Scarlet Fairy, formerly Ilaria, who, amid a decades-long grudge, holds the transgression against her sister. They decide to settle things through a good old-fashioned bet, with Pinocchio and Geppetto's fate hanging in the balance.

Will the sisters find a way back to one another? Or is this, like many matters of the heart, a gamble that comes with strings?"

Well, you've read the synopsis. Which means you've basically read the whole book. Chiara (sorry, the Blue Fairy) grants Geppetto's wish, makes the deal with Ilaria, and then we spend way too long learning the way too simple backstory of how Chiara became the good Blue Fairy and Ilaria became the big bad Scarlet Fairy. Like 90% of the book follows Chiara's decision to join the fairies and Ilaria resenting her for it and being a child about it, until she ultimately gives up her heart and becomes the Scarlet Fairy to spite her sister. Fine, but also...kind of weak as far as reasons to literally remove your heart from your chest with the intention to destroy it go.

Even when we eventually get to the action, things are kind of inconsistent and lackluster. Maybe if you're super into Pinocchio this book would be up your alley. I am not, and I found it to be solidly middle of the road. I finished it. There's that.

Anne of Greenville - Mariko Tamaki

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Hello! Welcome to the inside of my book! My name is Anne, and this is my story. Yes, the WHOLE story is mine, all mine. Well, not exactly, but most of it is me. Even the not-so-pretty stuff. My moms say I have a tendency to get 'lost' in things, that I'm a daydreamer who is easily distracted. I take that as a compliment. Possibly you will read these pages and think they are a mess, and I will take that as a compliment, too! Possibly you will think I have terrible grammar. To that I will say, language is evolving. Maybe you'll read these pages and think, Is Anne the coolest or is it just me? A perfectly reasonable response to this book.

Where was I? Distracted. Right! More about me! I'm a queer Japanese American singer, actor, and choreographer of disco operas. I've recently moved to the most boring place in the world, also known as Greenville. I have a tendency to A) fall in love quickly, deeply, and effervescently and B) fly off the handle in the face of jerks...who are sadly in abundance in my new hometown. But Greenville is also where I met my new BFF, Berry, and first laid eyes on the girl of my dreams, Gilly - so it's not the worst place in the world.

It's close, though!

So yes, my first months in Greenville involved a series of increasingly dramatic and disastrous events that were somewhat sucky for me but will make for a thought-provoking and enjoyable read. If you like romance, being caught in the middle, exotic school outfits, golden retrievers, high school drama (societies), and love triangles, this is the book for you!

Want to see if I survive Greenville? If I land the big part and find my one true love? Turn the page and find out!"

Oof, I went back and forth for so long on how high to rate this book. If you average out the 5, 3, and 3 for each category, it's, what, 3.6? I still cant decide if that's accurate to how I felt about this, but I'm going with it. On the one hand, Anne roller skates! And very accurately describes the act of roller skating as being like "putting wings on your feet, like that god Hermes, but with way less family baggage." You also get excellent one-liners, such as:

"The butt, the softest but hardest landing of them all."

"Danny is 'aggressively gay' and I am 'deliriously queer.'"

On the other, I feel like the cover description is kind of an over-promise-under-deliver situation, unfortunately. Like, on paper, is all of it technically true? Sure. But while objectively factual, the reality of the reading experience was that you get miniscule tastes of her crush, her involvement in the play, the "love triangle" with hefty, disgusting, and truly irredeemable amounts of racism and homophobia in between. Which leads me to my other reason for not being sure how high to rate this book in spite of the massive amount of promise it held - why in the fuck did she and her moms move to Greenville?! 

Their move is explained in only the vaguest of terms. One of her moms is a vice principal, and they move a lot so she can work at different schools. The age-old story of public school admin families, constantly bouncing from place to place based on where the parent is stationed. Tale as old as time. But even if I buy the idea of  them moving to all these places to experience different school settings, I have to say the level of vitriol in that town, coupled with the complete lack of upside, would have for me and should have been for them an immediate nope the fuck out. 

In all honesty, it read like the author had this idea of someone moving to a new town and it being horrifically, inexplicably toxic, hostile, homophobic, and racist, but them being trapped there and having to find a way to stick it out...but then they never actually fleshed out why they had to be there, so instead they just wrote around it the entire book. Without the why, the entire thing falls flat. Add to that like 99% of the book being unforgivable acts of racism and homophobia and then the last twenty pages (literally, I counted) things turning on a dime and magically being better, and the wheels kind of start to fall off for me.

Overall, I liked Anne, her parents were great, Berry was solid, Bev was excellent, and I wish we had seen more of Gilly's dad because he seemed chill. I would have been very on board with the book if the plot had been developed better - give us a reason for being in Greenville, show us glimpses of the town being redeemable, if the antagonists are going to eventually turn things around make them more three-dimensional and less caricature-y - and if more time had been spent on the falling action. It had potential, but needed balance.

Midnight Strikes - Zeba Shahnaz

Initial Draw: ☆☆☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Seventeen-year-old Anaïs just wants tonight to end. As an outsider at the kingdom’s glittering anniversary ball, she has no desire to rub shoulders with the nation’s most eligible (and pompous) bachelors—especially not the notoriously roguish Prince Leo. But at the stroke of midnight, an explosion rips through the palace, killing everyone in its path. Including her.

The last thing Anaïs sees is fire, smoke, chaos . . . and then she wakes up in her bedroom, hours before the ball. No one else remembers the deadly attack or believes her warnings of disaster.

Not even when it happens again. And again. And again.

If she’s going to escape this nightmarish time loop, Anaïs must take control of her own fate and stop the attack before it happens. But the court’s gilded surface belies a rotten core, full of restless nobles grabbing at power, discontented commoners itching for revolution, and even royals who secretly dream of taking the throne. It’s up to Anaïs to untangle these knots of deadly deceptions . . . if she can survive past midnight."

I got this book in my most recent YA book subscription box. Unpacked the box, got one look at the book in all its beautiful-cover-gold-gilt-edged glory, skimmed the included letter from the author, and immediately sat down and started reading. Cinderella, but with explosions and murder and coups and stuff? Sign me up! Not sure I've ever gone from knowing nothing about a book to needing to read it this quickly before. 

Anais has a bit of blood magic, inherited from her father's side of the family, but other than that she is...just a young woman. She isn't a super hero, adventurer, powerful mage, what have you. She's a teenager whose mom made her go to a party, and now she's caught in a time loop trying to save the country that colonized her home. 

In this impossible position, she cycles through some pretty understandable emotions - sometimes she's energized, excited by a good idea, ready to stop the loop. Others she's discouraged, hopeless, ready to give up. Through it all, she never gives up, even when some of the people she manages to convince to help her (the prince among them) point out that she has every reason to be okay with the royal family and all the nobility at the palace being left to suffer their fate. 

She knows no one could blame her for dusting her hands off and bailing on a problem that is not hers, but she is also the only one who knows what is about to happen each time the loop resets and, therefore, the only one who can do anything about it. She feels duty-bound to fix things, and she won't stop trying until she's exhausted every option. She's an amazing main character, and I loved her immediately. 

If there was anything I would change about this book, it would be that Anais wasn't alone in her awareness of the time loop. I get the decision, and it makes sense, but without spoilers at some point it gets hard to reconcile the level of...connection, for lack of a better word?...between the characters when for one of them there is endless history of interactions and for the other there is a few hours. It's fine, it ultimately works out okay, but I'm intrigued by what might have been if Anais had found some magical way to bring someone else into her loop and have a partner she didn't have to re-convince to help her every night. Were I to write a fan fiction inspired by this, that's what I would write.

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors - Sonali Dev

Initial draw: ✰✰✰✰✰
Character development: ✰✰
Plot/Writing style: ✰✰

Audiobook narration: ✰✰
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that only in an overachieving Indian American family can a genius daughter be considered a black sheep.

Dr. Trisha Raje is San Francisco's most acclaimed neurosurgeon. But that's not enough for the Rajes, her influential immigrant family who's achieved power by making its own non-negotiable rules: never trust an outsider; never do anything to jeopardize your brother's political aspirations; and never, ever, defy your family. Trisha is guilty of breaking all three rules. But now she has a chance to redeem herself. So long as she doesn't repeat old mistakes.

Up-and-coming chef DJ Caine has known people like Trisha before, people who judge him by his rough beginnings and place pedigree above character. He needs the lucrative job the Rajes offer, but he values his pride too much to indulge Trisha's arrogance. And then he discovers that she's the only surgeon who can save his sister's life. As the two class, their assumptions crumble like the spun sugar on one of DJ's stunning desserts. But before a future can be savored there's a past to be reckoned with...

A family trying to build home in a new land.

A man who has never felt at home anywhere.

And a choice to be made between the two."

Now that I've finished this book, the description seems wildly inaccurate to me. Trisha doesn't strike me as in any way the black sheep of the family. The book does open with a pretty early reference to her estrangement from her family; however, it is pretty quickly revealed that it's a mutual decision, and even early on we have indications that her lack of involvement with her family is more her choice (at least in the case of her siblings and mother) than theirs. Whatever the case, though, Trisha has just begun to make contact with her family again at the start of the book when she meets DJ while invading his catering kitchen during an event and immediately makes a horrible first impression. Things progress in true Pride and Prejudice fashion from there, with both Trisha and DJ firmly convinced that the other person is terrible. For what it's worth, I stood firmly on DJ's side...but that may have been because all the descriptions of his food made me want to eat it all.

I know I joked about things progressing just like Pride and Prejudice, but in actuality it didn't seem to be very closely based off of the classic story, and I can't decide if I liked that it was a looser interpretation or not. Frankly, if I hadn't known going into it that it was supposed to be a "retelling" I wouldn't have guessed that it was, and part of me feels like if they hadn't started with that premise, this would have been a better book. Specifically, the way Wickham was shoehorned in felt a little too melodramatic to me - she read like a soap opera villain, and that storyline was hard to take seriously, not to mention horribly problematic and cringeworthy. Beyond that, Trisha and her dad are also fairly terrible, and most of the characters are one-note and underdeveloped. It seemed like the author was trapped between wanting to retell a classic and wanting to write a completely original story, and the middle ground ended up...dissatisfying. 

As far as the plot, not only was it lackluster, it was full to bursting with ableism. Remember that bit in the cover summary about how Trisha is the only surgeon who can save DJ's sister's life? Well, the surgery that can do that will cause Emma to lose her sight, so Emma staunchly refuses to have the surgery done because...that's right...she would rather literally die than be blind. I did not love that, and I loved it even less when a. after initially being told the surgery would damage her optic nerves she wasn't given any kind of social worker support or connected with anyone to talk through her options and b. nothing developed from there. We find out that Emma doesn't want the surgery, and then we spend like three-quarters of the book going back and forth between Trisha at the hospital thinking about being around food and arguing with DJ, Trisha being with DJ arguing, or DJ being by himself cooking, thinking about what a bitch Trisha is, and worrying about how he'll pay for Emma's (unwanted) medical procedure. Then all of a sudden at the very end of the book they're like HOLD UP, wait, we love each other! I mean I know that happens in the original Pride and Prejudice, but this felt MUCH more abrupt and, frankly, pretty forced and unexplainable, because Trisha is unbearable. 

Clunky and ableist overall plot aside, there were also a couple super weird plot points included that I could not make heads or tails of. There are multiple dramatic references to how Trisha was "burned" as a child, for instance, which is basically how they excuse her being an unmitigated douche when she first meets DJ, because the extreme trauma of the experience led to her having horrible anxiety in kitchens. But then the burning story is ultimately revealed to have been like a few tiny drops of hot oil landing on her while learning how to cook something. I'm sorry but...what? Maybe it's because I was expecting a Bend It Like Beckham-esque something caught on fire and I had to get a skin graft story, or maybe it's because I have a sick burn scar wrapping halfway around my wrist from spilling bacon grease on my arm, but with the level of emphasis given to the "burning," a couple splatters of oil did not sell it for me. There was also a long, ongoing scene at the end of the book where Trisha lost a contact but refused to be seen in her "spectacles" that I could not stop rolling my eyes at. Christ on a cracker, Trisha, just put your fucking glasses on.

And finally, we have arrived at the audiobook narration, which was not my favorite. I could have lived with it at first, but then we got to DJ. Some context - Trisha grew up in California and speaks in a fairly nondescript American accent. DJ and Emma are from England and speak with British accents. And here's where the accents make things weird: the narrator speaks in a British accent for spoken dialogue coming from DJ or Emma, but does not use the accent for internal dialogue coming from DJ. And maybe this is something I should be able to move past, but it's super weird hearing an American accent say things like "he felt like a right arse" or "you are fecking unbelievable." It definitely took me out of it, and I have to give first prize to Trisha's feet "finding purchase on his arse" at the end of the book, because I could not stop laughing when I heard that. The narrator is obviously capable of pulling off a British accent, so why not just use it anytime you're reading from DJ's perspective? Or better yet, get a British person to read his character? Bleh.

Ultimately, I wouldn't say this was a bad book, necessarily, but as you can tell from my rating breakdown at the top, the biggest thing it has going for it is the initial draw. You could read the first quarter and then skip to the end, I guess. Or you could look into one of the books below instead.

Alternate Pride and Prejudice retellings to check out:

• Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalalluddin
• Pride by Ibi Zoboi
• Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal

Other books featuring Indian American main characters to try:

• Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi
• Love, Hate, and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed
• Pashmina by Nidhi Chanani
• When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon

Bookish and the Beast - Ashley Poston

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Rosie Thorne is feeling stuck - on her college application essays, in her small town, and on that mysterious General Sond cosplayer she met at ExcelsiCon. Most of all, she's stuck in her grief over her mother's death. Her only solace was her late mother's library of rare Starfield novels, but even that disappeared when they sold it to pay off hospital bills. 

On the other hand, Vance Reigns has been Hollywood royalty for as long as he can remember - with all the privilege and scrutiny that entails. When a tabloid scandal catches up to him, he's forced to hide out somewhere the paparazzi would never expect to find him: Small Town USA. At least there's a library in the house. Too bad he doesn't read.

When Rosie and Vance's paths collide and a rare book is accidentally destroyed, Rosie finds herself working to repay the debt. And while most Starfield superfans would jump at the chance to work in close proximity to the Vance Raines, Rosie has discovered something about Vance: he's a jerk, and she can't stand him. The feeling is mutual.

But as Vance and Rosie begrudgingly get to know each other, their careful masks come off - and they may just find that there's more risk in shutting each other out than in opening their hearts."

💬    💬    💬

Sooooooooo story time. Way back in March (March 16th to be exact) my colleagues and I reported to work and learned that we were temporarily closing due to COVID. Being the library nerds we are, a lot of our staff (me included, obvi) took the opportunity to stock up on books before we headed home. Of course, as has been well-documented on this blog, I wound up having a difficult time focusing on books after this closure, and most of those books have sat unread for months, waiting for me to be able to concentrate. 

Recently, my focus has been getting better, so I've started working my way through this mountain of books. Of course, one mountain isn't enough, so I also requested some advanced reader copies. The stars aligned, and I decided to read Geekerella, one of the books I randomly chose off our shelves because it sounded interesting, followed by Bookish and the Beast, one of the ARCs I requested because I'm a sucker for Beauty and the Beast.

Y'ALL. This is an effin series! And there's a book in between! WHICH I HAVE NOT READ. So...weird coincidence that I happened to read two books in the same series one right after the other without realizing it, and also now I have to read The Princess and the Fangirl. Another book to add to the mountain.

Anyway, about the book itself. The description does a pretty thorough job of breaking down what to expect, and there aren't a whole lot of surprises in the plot, but its beauty is in its simplicity. There are ups and downs, but it's a light read, and it'll probably make you happy. Honestly, particularly right now, what more could you ask for?

Oh, what was that? If you said great characters, I agree 100%, and Bookish and the Beast has them in spades. Vance was ok - he didn't have me wowed, but he was a serviceable MC. Rosie, on the other hand...can I get a hell yes? She is feisty, outspoken, and assertive, and I. LOVE. HER. There's a moment where she punches the Gaston character in the face, and I just... 

Also, huge shout out to Space Dad, her silver-haired, hella rad children's librarian father. 😍 Authors, do you want me to immediately fall in love with your book? Include an awesome librarian character. Impossible for me to resist. Then, of course, rounding out the fantastic character list, we have Quinn and Annie, Rosie's best friends. We should all be so lucky as to have a pair of BFFs as loving and supportive as they are. (I mean, I am so lucky, not to rub it in or anything. 😉)

But back to the book. Whether you're a Beauty and the Beast fan, a sucker for retellings, or just a fan of pleasant reads, this is a good book to add to your shelf. Give it a shot!

Straight On Till Morning - Liz Braswell

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Sixteen-year-old Wendy Darling's life is not what she imagined it would be. The doldrums of an empty house after her brothers have gone to school, the dull parties where everyone thinks she talks too much, and the fact that her parents have decided to send her away to Ireland as a governess - it all makes her wish things could be different.

Wendy's only real escape is in writing down tales of Never Land. After nearly meeting her hero, Peter Pan, four years earlier, she still holds on to the childhood hope that his magical home truly exists. She also holds on to his shadow.

So when an opportunity to travel to Never Land via pirate ship presents itself, Wendy makes a deal with the devil. But Never Land isn't quite the place she imagined it would be. Unexpected dangers and strange foes pop up at every turn, and a little pixie named Tinker Bell seems less than willing to help.

But when Captain Hook reveals some rather permanent and evil plans for Never Land, it's up to the two of them to save Peter Pan - and his world."

In this Twisted Tale, Nana catches Peter Pan's shadow while Peter sits outside the nursery window listening to one of Wendy's stories, but Peter never returns to London to retrieve it. Wendy keeps the shadow safe for years, hoping for the day he finally does come back. While she waits, Wendy goes through the motions of life as a young lady, helping her mother keep the household running smoothly, preparing after-school tea for her brothers, and being bored to tears. Her only moments of happiness come when she scribbles stories of Never Land in her notebook. 

No one understands her imagination or love of stories, and when her parents find her notebook, they are horrified. Wendy is sixteen, and according to them the tales she has spun are "not the product of a happy, normal girl." To save her from herself, they decide to send her to Ireland to become a governess. Desperate to escape being sent away and forced to leave her childhood dreams behind, Wendy does the unthinkable. She contacts Captain Hook and makes a bargain...Peter's shadow in exchange for passage to and from Never Land.

Aboard his pirate ship with Hook in possession of Peter Pan's shadow, things go downhill quickly. For starters, Wendy is not as adept at negotiating with pirates as she thought she was, and as a result, she finds herself a prisoner, forced to serve as the pirates' mother. Even worse, Captain Hook plans to use the shadow not only to capture Peter, but to bring about the destruction of all of Never Land. With the help of one of the pirates, Wendy manages to escape the ship and make it to Never Land. She finds Tinker Bell and the Lost Boys, but no one has seen Peter in ages. Will Wendy be able to free Peter's shadow and save Never Land without him?

Peter Pan is one of my favorite Disney movies, so I've really been looking forward to reading this Twisted Tale, and I was not disappointed! It got off to a slow start, and I wish they had showed Wendy in more of the awkward social situations she obviously despises rather than alluding to them or revealing them through her memories, but that's a small gripe. Once she makes it to Never Land, it's basically non-stop adventure, something Wendy notes is much more exhausting and frustrating and far less exhilarating than she always imagined. 

Wendy and Tinker Bell team up to find Peter Pan, and while Wendy and Tink aren't very taken with each other in the movie version, in this world their initially unwilling partnership gradually blossoms into true friendship. Their relationship is possibly my favorite part of the book. I also dearly love how progressively snarky Wendy becomes as the book goes on, culminating in a line I never would have expected could crack me up as hard as it did - "The deuce you say." Trust me...it may not sound funny, but it is. This book was a Girl Power anthem and a testament to the magic and might of storytelling.

Mirror, Mirror - Jen Calonita

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"'What if the Evil Queen poisoned the prince?'

Following her beloved mother's death, the kingdom falls into the hands of Snow White's stepmother, commonly referred to as "the Evil Queen" by those she rules. Snow keeps her head down at the castle, hoping to make the best of her situation.

But when new information about her parents resurfaces and a plot to kill her goes haywire, everything changes for Snow. With the help of a group of wary dwarfs, a kind prince she thought she'd never see again, and a mysterious stranger from her past, Snow embarks on a quest to stop the Evil Queen and take back her kingdom. But can she stop an enemy who knows her every move and will stop at nothing to retain her power... including going after the ones Snow loves?"

I have to tell you, I've been on the fence about how to rate this one. On the one hand, I did enjoy reading it. It's well-written, and it's a fun nostalgia read. On the other, if you've seen Snow White you've basically read this book. 

Perhaps if I hadn't read this so soon after Conceal, Don't Feel, my reaction would have been different, since that story wasn't hugely different from the original either. Or maybe if I enjoyed Snow White more, I would have been more into this. I don't know. I'm just looking back at the Twisted Tale series, and comparing these two to those that came before, these don't measure up for me. Take a look at the earlier titles:

• A Whole New World: Jafar summons the Genie first, throwing everything else about the story off.
• Once Upon a Dream: Sleeping Beauty never woke up. Everything about the story is different.
• As Old As Time: Belle's mother cursed the Beast. So much about the story is different.
• Reflection: Li Shang dies, and Mulan has to journey to the Underworld to try to save him. Uh...needless to say, EVERYTHING is different.
• Part of Your World: Ursula won the battle and rules Eric's kingdom. Different, different, different.

The first five books in this series are all substantially different from the story they were retelling. Then you hit Mirror, Mirror and Conceal, Don't Feel, and it's like...hey, what if this tiny thing was different? Well...in this case, I guess that means that the princess saves the prince instead of the other way around, but what else does it change? Not a whole heck of a lot! Like I said, it's well-written, and it isn't a slog to get through, so if you're looking for some Disney feels, give it a read. But if you're looking for a real head-spinning twisted tale, this isn't it. 

#FirstPageFriday - Mirror, Mirror

Woohoo, another retelling! This week's #FirstPageFriday is Mirror, Mirror by Jen Calonita, and the review will drop January 8th!

Conceal, Don't Feel - Jen Calonita

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"What if Anna and Elsa never knew each other?

When a magical accident erases Anna and Elsa's memories not only of magic, but of each other the sisters are separated for protection. But when Elsa unexpectedly finds herself as a young queen mysterious magic begins to happen and questions of her past start to form. Will the sisters ever be reunited?"

Conceal, Don't Feel, or, Give Women Real Fucking Pockets! There was a pivotal letter involved in this book, and no one could find out what was written in it because the princesses kept dropping it. Usually when I'm planning to review a book I try to take notes as I read, but this one was a fairly quick read so I didn't. Literally my only note was about Anna and Elsa, and all women for that matter, needing better pockets. My kingdom (all of Arendelle!) for a pocket that can hold a piece of paper!

Pocket issues aside, this book is a part of the Twisted Tale series, which I greatly enjoy. It was an interesting spin on Frozen, and I kind of loved that even with such a big shift (an entire person being deleted not just from her sister's life, but from an entire kingdom's memory is...wow, quite a bit of troll magic!), the spirit and theme of the book remained remarkably similar to the movie. Hans is still a complete sociopath, Kristoff and Sven remain the perfect duo, Anna continues to be a delightful badass, and it was great fun revisiting Arendelle in this alternate reality.

Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe - Melissa de la Cruz

My rating: ⭐

From the cover:

"Darcy Fitzwilliam is 29, beautiful, successful, and brilliant. She dates hedge funders and basketball stars and is never without her three cellphones—one for work, one for play, and one to throw at her assistant (just kidding). Darcy’s never fallen in love, never has time for anyone else’s drama, and never goes home for Christmas if she can help it. But when her mother falls ill, she comes home to Pemberley, Ohio, to spend the season with her family.

Her parents throw their annual Christmas bash, where she meets one Luke Bennet, the smart, sardonic slacker son of their neighbor. Luke is 32-years-old and has never left home. He’s a carpenter and makes beautiful furniture, and is content with his simple life. He comes from a family of five brothers, each one less ambitious than the other. When Darcy and Luke fall into bed after too many eggnogs, Darcy thinks it’s just another one night stand. But why can’t she stop thinking of Luke? What is it about him? And can she fall in love, or will her pride and his prejudice against big-city girls stand in their way?"

I'm a sucker for Pride and Prejudice remakes, so I was excited to read this when it popped up on my radar. Alas, that excitement was short-lived. From the first page, the writing was cringeworthy. Right off the bat, for instance, she describes her approximately 45-year-old driver as having a "grandfatherly" twinkle in his eye and then, sentences later, rejoices over being wrinkle free at the ripe old age of twenty-nine and not looking a day over twenty-four. Exhibit B, my personal favorite example of the lackluster writing, can be found in the descriptions of four of the men in Darcy's life, found mere pages apart from each other.

"Chris had always been handsome, but now, as he approached her, he looked more picture perfect than ever before, a tan, toned, chiseled specimen of a man who looked like he had walked straight out of a Ralph Lauren catalog and into the Fitzwilliam Christmas party."

"If Chris Mayfair was catalog model handsome, Bingley was movie star handsome. He had undeniably sculpted good looks, but unlike Chris, those looks came with character and personality, quirks and asymmetries that made his face just as lovable and unique as it was handsome." (Don't even get me started on making his first name Bingley, good lord.)

"If Chris Mayfair was catalog handsome and Bingley was movie star handsome, then Luke was real-life-person handsome. He had dimples and dark brown eyes and his hair was never anything short of unruly."

"If Chris Mayfair was catalog handsome and Bingley Charles was movie star handsome and Luke Bennet was real-life-person handsome, then Carl Donovan was simply nice-looking."

How does an editor not see this in a book and take it out? Sweet Jesus, come on, that's so bad. And as if the juvenile writing style weren't enough, the story was all over the place and Darcy was flighty, insecure, and judgmental. Every interaction between her and another person featured an inner monologue detailing the other person's flaws and all the ways in which Darcy was better than them, yet inexplicably everyone seemed to think the sun rose and set with her. There was nothing about her I could find to like, from her shoehorned-in name brand impractical outfits down to her hate-love of Gilmore Girls, the show which she describes both as "saccharine, tediously dull" and "quick and witty."

I was sending pictures of particularly awful passages to my sister as I read, and she finally asked how old the author was because she thought the book was written by a teenager trying to imagine what it would be like to be a successful adult. That was exactly the vibe I got from this book, and if it weren't such a quick read and hadn't become entertaining in its awfulness, I would have DNFed after the first couple chapters. Perhaps the biggest letdown was that were it not for the names and inclusion of "Pride and Prejudice" in the title, I never would have pieced together that this was supposed to be a retelling of Jane Austen's classic. If this is what Melissa de la Cruz considers a reimagining of Pride and Prejudice, she may need to revisit the original.

Blanca & Roja - Anna-Marie McLemore

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"The biggest lie of all is the story you think you already know.

The del Cisne girls have never just been sisters; they’re also rivals, Blanca as obedient and graceful as Roja is vicious and manipulative. They know that, because of a generations-old spell, their family is bound to a bevy of swans deep in the woods. They know that, one day, the swans will pull them into a dangerous game that will leave one of them a girl, and trap the other in the body of a swan.

But when two local boys become drawn into the game, the swans’ spell intertwines with the strange and unpredictable magic lacing the woods, and all four of their fates depend on facing truths that could either save or destroy them. Blanca & Roja is the captivating story of sisters, friendship, love, hatred, and the price we pay to protect our hearts."

Blanca and Roja are sisters, born to a family line cursed to have two daughters only to have one taken by los cisnes, the swans, in the chosen daughter's fifteenth year. While they were born opposites, natural rivals, they refuse to accept that one day they will be parted. Instead, the pair does everything they can to make themselves as similar as possible, hoping to confuse los cisnes. "If the swans can't tell us apart," Blanca tells her sister, "they can't decide which of us to take." When the time that a sister is usually taken has passed, Blanca and Roja start to believe they have succeeded...until, finally, the swans appear. 

The sisters are left alone in their house while los cisnes decide who they will take. Roja, with her bloodred hair and sharp edges, knows it is she who will be taken, but when she is attacked while confronting the swans, a bear comes from the woods to save her. The bear, however, is not what it seems--not a bear at all, but a boy from town named Barclay, who had gone missing not long before. Suddenly the sisters find their fates entwined with those of Barclay and his best friend, Page. Will los cisnes succeed in dividing the sisters forever? Or will the bonds being built between this foursome be enough to break the spell, free the sisters, and release Barclay and Page from their own prisons?

While I did dock a star because the narrative was difficult to follow at times, overall I thought this book was amazing. The characters were well developed, and it was fascinating to read about the del Cisne family traditions and experience this fairytale from a new cultural perspective. I especially love watching Roja, Blanca, Barclay, and Page evolve after the boys come into the sisters' lives and their relationships develop. This was such a unique reading experience, and if you're a fan of fantasy, fairytale retellings, #ownvoices stories...pick this title up.