fairy tale retelling

Mirrors that don’t reflect reality

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

December 29, 2018 by teresaelectro 3 Comments

I received Boy, Snow, Bird from an earlier CBR book exchange, but it had been collecting dust for a few years. I finally had a reason to pick it back up when my Mocha Girls Read book club selected it for a fairytale’s retold theme. Helen Oyeyemi’s novel is a VERY loose version of Snow White set in the 1950s. Boy Novak runs away to a small town to escape her abusive father. She meets a man named Arturo who isn’t quite a prince, but he adores her. After sort of wearing her down and her own loneliness, she marries him […]

12/29/2018 teresaelectro's CBR10 Review No:14 |

Novik’s books aren’t just about magic; they are magic

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

November 5, 2018 by alwaysanswerb 1 Comment

Uprooted was one of my favorite books of the last few years, and possibly ever. Since I’d never read Novik’s Temeraire books, I had no idea if it was a particular stroke of genius from her, or if she’s just always been consistently great and I never knew. I still haven’t read Temeraire, but now that she’s 2/2 for me with Spinning Silver, the imperative to do so becomes more pressing. Here is the summary from Goodreads: “Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father’s inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge […]

11/5/2018 alwaysanswerb's CBR10 Review No:41 |

A strange re-telling of Snow White

Poison by Sarah Pinborough

January 12, 2018 by Mikki Blu 2 Comments

Well, this was an odd little book. As per the blurb: An enticing contemporary retelling of the classic story of Snow White. While the the handsome prince, the jealous queen, the beautiful girl and of course the poison all appear, Sarah Pinborough’s charming and provocative spin on the story will captivate fans of the fairy tale all over again. I was a big fan of Once Upon a Time when it came out, with it’s unique view of fairy tale characters so I thought it might be interesting to see what this author did with it. The copy I picked […]

1/12/2018 Mikki Blu's CBR10 Review No:3 |

A slightly more realistic fairy tale

Snow White: A Graphic Novel by Matt Phelan

December 10, 2017 by crystalclear Leave a Comment

[Note – this review contains spoilers] I had a few free minutes in the library, so I picked up this graphic novel version of Snow White. This takes us out of the normal fairy tale and sticks us in New York City in 1928. A young Samantha White, called “Snow”, loses her mother at a young age. Her father, a wealthy businessman, is dazzled by a famous actress and marries her 10 years after becoming a widower. She sends the now teenaged Snow off to school. She starts to see messages in the stock ticker tape, (perhaps illusions caused by […]

12/10/2017 crystalclear's CBR9 Review No:23 |

“The girls were wild for dancing, and nothing else. No hearts beat underneath those thin, bright dresses. They laughed like glass.”

The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine

June 14, 2017 by alwaysanswerb Leave a Comment

3.5 stars This is a very imaginative and clever re-telling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses fairy-tale set in Prohibition NYC. The princesses are flappers and their father is some kind of business magnate trying to protect his family legacy without a son, the poor man. He keeps them locked up in their large home to protect their virtue and reputation, because that’s a surefire way to earn the obedience of teenagers. Here’s the overview from Goodreads: “Jo, the firstborn, “The General” to her eleven sisters, is the only thing the Hamilton girls have in place of a mother. She is […]

6/14/2017 alwaysanswerb's CBR9 Review No:44 |

Underwhelming

The Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman

February 26, 2017 by Ellesfena 2 Comments

This is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, with some Snow White mixed in. Since I read it on my Kindle, I didn’t realize before I started that this is actually a sort of graphic novel, or maybe an illustrated short story? I’m not sure what it looks like in actual book form. I had just assumed it was a regular novel, but it’s not even 75 pages long. The Sleeper and the Spindle is the story of a queen, who sets out with three dwarf companions, to find a famous enchanted sleeping princess and try to wake her and break […]

2/26/2017 Ellesfena's CBR9 Review No:8 |

There’s gotta be a Game of Thrones joke here somewhere

Winter by Marissa Meyer

February 25, 2017 by CoffeeShopReader 1 Comment

This is a pretty good story, but somehow I didn’t like a lot about it. The final fairy tale ends up being Snow White, and while Winter fits the general outline, her Prince Charming Jacin doesn’t quite make sense. His attachment to Winter and hers to him just doesn’t seem to have much of a foundation other than they kind of grew up together and he’s been around her entire life. The other thing I didn’t really like is how the heroes spent so much of the story fragmented, which means that certain parts drag badly, while others fly by. […]

2/25/2017 CoffeeShopReader's CBR9 Review No:13 |

A fairy tale about salad as heroine

Cress by Marissa Meyer

February 25, 2017 by CoffeeShopReader 2 Comments

I have to admit, the title got me a little. I figured ‘Cress’ was short for something, but I would not have guessed “Crescent”; I was thinking something along the lines of ‘watercress’, which made no sense given that the model fairy tale this time is supposed to be Rapunzel. The other books have heroines whose names have some clear connection to the base story, so why this doesn’t is beyond me. In terms of enjoyment, Cress falls in between Cinder and Scarlet. 3.5 stars. Cress herself has a lot more personality than her fairy tale analogue, largely because her […]

2/25/2017 CoffeeShopReader's CBR9 Review No:12 |

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