Review: Princess of Thorns

Title: Princess of Thorns
Author: Stacey Jay
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 400
Release Date: December 9, 2014
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Summary: Game of Thrones meets the Grimm's fairy tales in this twisted, fast-paced romantic fantasy-adventure about Sleeping Beauty's daughter, a warrior princess who must fight to reclaim her throne. Though she looks like a mere mortal, Princess Aurora is a fairy blessed with enhanced strength, bravery, and mercy yet cursed to destroy the free will of any male who kisses her. Disguised as a boy, she enlists the help of the handsome but also cursed Prince Niklaas to fight legions of evil and free her brother from the ogre queen who stole Aurora's throne ten years ago. Will Aurora triumph over evil and reach her brother before it's too late? Can Aurora and Niklaas break the curses that will otherwise forever keep them from finding their one true love? (via Goodreads)

My Rating:

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The Princess of all fairy tale retelling stories! This book was astounding from cover to cover! This is everything I want in a book! Excitement, action, romance -but not too much- bravery, flaws, loyalty! I absolutely love it! Did you love Arya in Game of Thrones? How about the Alana series? Fairy tales? Then you will love this book!

The main character is a young girl who disguises as her brother in order to rescue him - and her kingdom! She teams up with Niklaas, the eleventh son of a king to help her. Stacey Jay writes a beautiful romance for them that feels so natural you can't help but love it!

I will say, I was a little bit resistant to it at first because of how much I loved their relationship as friends! Every character was beautifully written, and the story never lets up! Each new adventure follows right behind the previous!

I particularly enjoyed that this was not a typical retelling story. This was about Princess Aurora's (Sleeping Beauty) children, although that took a moment for me to figure out because in this story Sleeping Beauty's name is actually Rose. Bit confusing, but once you get that down it's fascinating. 

This is a stand alone book with no sequel, and although I am disappointed because I would love to keep reading about theses wonderful characters, I thing I am actually glad. So often anymore, we have authors pumping out trilogies, and 7 book series there are very few stand alone books in fantasy anymore (or at least that I can find!). I did notice while poking around Goodreads that Stacey Jay has written about 14 books to date and one of them is called Of Beast and Beauty so I think I know what I'm looking into next!

Basically I have nothing whatsoever to complain about for this amazing piece of literature and everyone ever should pick this book up! Do it yesterday because you need to read this book!

What is your favorite retelling story?

Review: Cinder

Cinder by Marissa Meyers

**This review was originally posted on my Goodreads** 

I started reading this book a long time ago not I sort of lost interest very early on and put it on long term hold for a while. But I made a goal this [2014] year to cut down on my currently reading shelf, so I decided to give it another try. 

It must have been book ADD because I really loved it this time around! I thought that this dystopian science fiction fairy tale retelling was so creative and took on such a beautiful life of it's own outside of the well-known Cinderella tale. The futuristic setting was incredibly well thought out and realistic seeming.

I was a bit wary about the relationship between Kai and Cinder because I expected it to seem fake or forced, but I thought that Marissa Meyer did a really great job keeping it believable while still maintaining that fairy tale feel to it. I also really liked that she brought a political feel to it with an incredibly rich background. 

I would recommend this great book to anyone who loves dystopian books and fairy tale retellings.

Cinder on Goodreads

My review on Goodreads

Review: Wicked

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

This book took me forever to get through and I was very disappointed. I saw the Broadway musical and I loved it so when I heard it was a book I had to check it out. It was not at all what I expected in many different ways. When the book started it was just a lot more blunt about life, which is fine, but as it went on, there were more chapters that were just unnecessary and frankly disturbing and had no place in the plot. I'm not talking about in that 'Oh, good heavens to Betsy! Did that young man just engage in inappropriate sexual activities?' It seems when Maguire could not think of repugnant scenes to add, simply for shock value, he rattled on about politics for pages before abruptly, and without any explanation, jumping 5, 6, 9 years at a time. I found it hard to care about most of the characters and many of them did things that did not seem to fit with their 

Some of the gems that this book had to offer were: page long descriptions of someone having diarrhea, a threesome with a tiger, descriptions of a 9 year-year-old playing with her mother's nipple, and a creation story featuring a goddess's urine. I got the impression that the book was trying to be edgy with some of it, but it just came off terrible. 

I also later found out that this was written as a metaphor for something (different people say it's about different things, so I'm not sure) and maybe if I understood more about it, I could appreciate this book more, but I doubt it. 

This book was quite a disappointment and I'll probably not read the rest of the series. I do not recommended reading this book. 

Wicked on Goodreads
My review on Goodreads