modern sleeping beauty story will put you to sleep
345628
I love fairy tales, time travel books, and fantasy stories. This book did have a little bit of a modern twist, and the setting was in the Ukraine. Other than this, the book was perfect for a good night's sleep. I had such a hard time getting throughout the story, I felt my eyes close every few pages! The ending was a bit better than the story, which I am sure you have read about by now, and was seriously disappointed after reading all the rave reviews. What was I missing? I love these type of books! I guess this one was a definite miss for me. Hopefully you are in the majority and enjoy it more than I did.
2437042
Oh my. So much fluff. So much fur. So much snow. So much longing. So much grief. So much poverty. And then comes along the Snow Child and saves the day. Sort of. Because even her beauty and mysterious ways can fill so many pages. So you fill them with cozy dinners in this and that hut, field plowing here and hunting there. More snow. But the symbolism! you say. Hey, symbols, like metaphors, are fine as long as they don't just jump off the page and scream, look at me, aren't I clever?

Unfortunately, the entire plot, what there is of it, is predictable. There are not-too-subtle hints that the girl melts when it gets hot, that she needs her fox to survive, and that (spoiler) once the boy gets into the picture, there is going to be a romance.

Obviously, the girl Faina (an obvious play on the word fairy) is something between a spirit and a goddess, and of course as such she has to follow strict rules and cannot ever become really mortal without giving up her magic powers, such as Cindarella had to get home before midnight or her carriage would turn into a pumpkin. But then we are not so sure any more when we learn, early on, that the girl had a mortal mother and father. She eats real food. And later on (spoiler) she is able to conceive a real child. She seems to be at one with nature, and yet she is a trapper and can be very savage. It is very hard to get a hold on this girls true being, whether as a fairy or a mortal, or both.

I got the feeling reading it, that the author was was trying to make an almagam of Hudsons Green Mansions, the writings of Jack London and the classical Russian fairy tale from which she openly admits she got the idea.

Then there are some little odd details that grated on my perhaps too overly-particular senses:Why are Mabel and husband old at 50? If I make the calculation correctly, Mabel lost her only child at birth when she was 40. It seems rather unlikely that this couple, who had been married for many years, would only conceive then. Just as it is unlikely they would go out to outhouse at night in the snow. More likely they would use a chamber pot.

(spoiler) But in the end, hurrah! the lonely old couple get their real child. Well, I never would have guessed.
361232
Oh, goodness. I would say I'm being generous with 2 stars, but I will settle for that because the story did keep me interested--even if it wasn't always for the right reasons.

First off, this is NOT a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast". The only thing it has in common with the fairy tale is that the hero is wealthy and a recluse. That's it. He's not even ugly because he is so freakin' gorgeous that a massive scar across his face doesn't detract from that. He's not even "beastly" or rude. There are no other similarities to the fairy tale. None.

Second, the romance isn't really that romantic. It's more based on lust and their physical attraction because they hardly ever spend any time together. It's all insta-love, which is not my cup of tea. Frankly, the heroine had a more established relationship with the hero's brother than the hero himself.

Third, the characters are over-the-top. Both the hero and heroine are insanely talented, intelligent, and beautiful, with their only flaws being these extreme emotional scarring they have because of their past. They're unbelievably perfect in every way, except for one, and then they're unbelievably broken in that. The heroine literally blacks out for a day because someone mentions something that reminds her of a trauma, and the hero won't leave his home because he's terrified for his safety (which I didn't really understand, since his trauma happened in his home, so it seems like he would have been more afraid of being home...hmm...).

But more than all of that, my biggest issue is the writing. I hate to criticize fellow indie authors, but this is bad. There are a lot of really basic errors. There's a ton of missing punctuation that makes it difficult to understand the meaning. There's tons of typos, spelling errors, and wrong words. Honestly, I would be surprised if this was edited in any way, shape, or form because there are so many issues with it, the book feels like it's a first draft.

Beyond just those types of mistakes, the dialogue is very stilted. At times it reads like it's from a historical novel because the word choice and syntax is so awkwardly non-modern. I don't want to pull out a bunch of examples, but there were a lot of really weird moments when I was wondering if the author ever bothered reading her book aloud to hear just how unrealistic it sounds.

And then there are weird things like the author's obsession with ellipses and exclamation points. You can't go a paragraph without both of these in it. Towards the end, it was hard to find a sentence with an ellipse, and it felt like every other sentence has an exclamation point on the end. It was distracting and awkward to read.
1463854
I was so excited about reading this book! After a few chapters I became bored and really didn't want to read anymore. Most of this book is exactly like the Disney movie. However, the author threw in an interesting story of Death and Love (sisters). That was the only part of the story I found interesting was the interactions between Death and Love (very little part). I stopped this book at 200 pages giving it a good chance. The entire book is very juvenile for even a young adult read. Almost like a really long little children's story. Also the author uses words out of content. Like, I steal the book into the Beast's house? I steal? I stuck it in or I placed it there, anything that would have made sense. I am not the grammar police by any means. If I can pick up your grammar errors or words out of content, you have a problem. LOL!
3573739
The tune from the Disney version of the Fairy Tale croons in my ears as I read the blub for this story. I love twists on Fairy Tales and Cinderella is a classic. Except this one doesnt want to get marriedand shes not a poor scullery maid.
Interesting.

I love Charlie (aka Cinderella) from the instant she steps out of the cab into the rain. Shes no pitiful poor-me, covered-in-ashes, awaiting her fairy God-mother version thats for sure. Shes a quip-cracking, spit-fire with a head on her shoulders, talent in her fingers, a dream in her heartand a pair of red shoes.
With tongue-in-cheek story telling (Kings, Royals, and the main male lead with the nickname of Prince Charming) the author launches into a humorous light read that isn't easy to put down. The characters are given a contemporary makeover, (figuratively as well as literally) and are pleasingly three dimensional. Yes even the wicked step-mother who, while I don't agree with her reasoning or her greed, gets to be a real person and not totally a villain for the sake of being a villain...mostly. (Shes still a villain and winner of the not a very nice person award, so she gets the part.)

I enjoyed the fact that the story doesn't waste time with copious amounts of sex-scenes and just gets on with the story. Thats not to say there isn't the sexual tension that a romance novel is famous forthere is. And poor Alex (aka Prince Charming) is not a saint.

In my opinion, there is only one point of contention within the story and thats the decision Alex makes (on his own!) for the solution to their problems. That decision came out of nowhere, with not even his thoughts (as written by the author) to give a foretelling of the bombshell. It made the climax a little stiff, but apart from that minute stumble, the story was brilliant, well-written and well-executed.

I also love, that like all good fairy tales, there is a moral to this story. A warning to ensure that the dream we have and are working towards is, in fact, our dreamand not a dream we inherited from others.

And there is even a taste of Book 2 in the series Waking Sleeping Beauty at the end of this story. While Im not off to find any sort of wizard, I am off to find the second bookand I hear tell  there is a third.
2626763
Sorry folks, but the "magic" of this book is that it's so pointless, and boring, and endless that those things put you to sleep. Not a quality experience for anyone involved  - and a terrible waste of potentially great bonding time.  A good bedtime story engages the reader as well as the children being read to and just gives them a chance to get still and quiet so that nature can take its course.  Read them a Junie B or Magic Treehouse book or The Hobbit or Aesop instead for crying out loud.  No future grown up is ever going to fondly remember being read this book as a child.
2153022
I am a huge fan of Stephen King and so I have wanted to write stories about his characters at times.  But I didn't, because they would have ended up like Doctor Sleep here.

It starts out good: Danny is an alcoholic and Andi is a man-hating lesbian and Rose is a sexy vampire and you have the makings of a powerful story.  Then Danny moves to some dinky New England town and IMMEDIATELY someone offers him a job.  Really?  Is that how the world works?  Gosh.  Then the hard-bitten AA boss also finds Danny a place to live.  Wow, maybe we should all take a bus to New England and get jobs that way.

Of course when Danny joins AA he sobers up overnight and has NO set-backs here, none.  He becomes the poster child for all 12 step programs and sadly, also becomes BORING.  Overnight his character loses all zest...it's like any generic middle aged man took over Dan Torrance.

But he has some Shine left so he goes to work at a hospice and uses his magic abilities to help dying people die.  Why?  Is it really such a hard thing to let them die on their own?  Also, it is clear that King does not have much experience with elderly dying people in nursing homes because no one has dementia and they all die like movie characters.  All prettied up.  Anyhow.

Abra (Cadabra) is born right at the same time Danny sobers up and she has even MORE shine than Danny.  In fact, this kid is the most magical of any shine-child ever born.  And is also completely boring.  How did a kid born with so much ESP end up like any other child and have NO character flaws? One of the failings of King's later books is Kids Who Are Too Perfect.  Abra is one of these.

So the psychic vampire cult headed by Rose the Sexy Hat try to find Abra so they can suck her magic and right there you know how this book will play out.  There were some good scenes but overall anyone could predict the fight between Good and Evil here and who would win.  Not King at his best, and not very scary either. This plot.

The real sparkle of King's writing is his rich and believable characters.  You will find none here.  Except for Rose the Hat's evil crew everyone was interchangeable and bland.  Dan could be John or Dave, Lucy was any female character out of any book anywhere, and the helpful older friend Billy was...snoring. I can see why.

When Doctor Sleep finally ends, you are kinda relieved.  But why was the title of this book a reference to a minor plot detail (Danny's job at the hospice gets him a corny nickname) and not "Steampunk Vampires Tour America" or "Abra Cadabra" or something just as irrelevant?  I wish this had been a better novel.

If you are new to Stephen King, skip this one and pick up The Shining or The Stand.  If you are on old fan like me, get it for cheap.
4464281
I had high hopes for this book. Set in just post Arthurian England complete with turmoil between Saxon and Briton. A monster who breathes out memory loss. Knights in not so shining armor. A devoted old couple at the center. You would think it would be exciting at the very least. Or emotionally rousing. But it drags and drags and gets a sad ending (why should all fairy tales have good endings). Has Ishiguro forgotten how to write? I would not recommend it to anyone I cared about.
2786087
Want a boring movie to watch?  Then this is the one for you.  Boring uninteresting story, silly uninspired acting, stupid pointless plot.  If you suffer from insomnia, this film will put you to sleep during the first 30 minutes.  A really great sleeper film!
3326582
In my review of Household Tales by Brothers Grimm, I discussed the fact that fairy tales contain practical lessons for adults, just as myths and parables, if the adults would just take the time to analyze them. This is what Selena Kitt did in this novella. Leaving the gratuitous sex in the story aside, she translated the many facts and symbols in the Rapunzel fairy tale into a modern drama.

 This is a tale about a woman suffering from cancer, who has taken treatments that resulted in the loss of her hair. She owns a beauty salon and wears a gorgeous wig because she is embarrassed by her hair loss (similar to the enchantress cutting Rapunzel's hair so that she could not use it to bring the prince to her). One of her clients (like the parents in the fairy tale) is more interested in herself than her daughter.  The daughter wants to cut off her hair and give it to a society that collects hair for cancer victims. Her mother refuses her permission to do so. The daughter's father, who is divorced from her mother, is attracted to the salon owner, who avoids him because she is embarrassed about having no hair (similar to Rapunzel being cut off from the prince because she lacked hair). The father agrees to his daughter's hair cutting. He and the salon owner get together by practical means. These are just some of the imaginative details that Kitt drew from the fairy tale for her story.
814291
All right! Another Sleeping Beauty take . . . sort of. It wasn't a fairy tale; it was about a girl investigating her beloved grandmother's past. Very poignant and focused on the Holocaust survivors even as it mixed in elements of the famous story.
2262543
I personally would give this book 1.5 stars, because I was very bored, but as a reviewer, I give it 3 stars because I think it's representative of its genre, and delivers what it promises.  A retelling of the 12 Dancing Princesses fairy tale, Entwined begins with a ball and a death.  When their mother passes away, the 12 princesses spend their mourning period slipping away to a magical land below the castle to dance in secret while their father, the King, is away.  But the escapism turns sinister when the Keeper of the magical underworld demands payment for the girls' entertainment.  With threats and mild violence, Keeper forces Azalea, the eldest princess, to help him escape the magical underworld.  There are a few romance subplots for the three eldest princesses, as well as a 'family togetherness' message.

The violence is mild enough for children 10 and up, and the romance is very chaste (a few kisses).  Everything ends happily ever after, as one would expect from such a story.  I think this would be an entertaining fairy tale book for grades 5-8, but older YA readers will be bored.  The characters are not drawn sharply enough, the settings are rarely well-described, and the plot is incredibly repetitive (476 pages are waaaaay too many for this story).  The 'family first' message is too heavy-handed, and the book suffers from era-indecision (it's set vaguely in a make-believe pseudo-European kingdom sometime in the early- to mid-1800s, but many of the attitudes and sentiments are decidedly modern).  I'm a big fan of YA literature (and I'm a 30-year-old adult woman), I enjoy fantasy novels (Robin McKinley has long been a favorite), and I don't always require sophistication from my pleasure-reading, but this was just too bland and shallow to keep my interest.
925460
Story is told too quickly. Anyone, but especially kids, need to be lulled to sleep softly and sloiwly.
511186
The focus of the stories in these anthologies all involve girls who are being forced to wed against their will.  Laurell K Hamilton headlines the book, but unfortunately her story is both the shortest as well as the least enjoyable.  The first story in the book, it ends at the 11% mark on a Kindle - and that includes all of the title pages before the story.  The rest of the stories are actually quiet good and make the book a worthwhile purchase.

Laurell's story is more along the lines of a fable.  To prevent her father from announcing her betrothal to a lecherous old man, Elinore declares that she's going to rescue Prince True, an arrogant prince taken captive decades ago by a sorceress.  Challenges must be met to proceed to the next test to get close to freeing the prince and no one who has ever returned from the attempt.  Elinore goes in expecting to die, preferring death to the marriage.  The story isn't long enough to feel anything for this rather stiff character, but Elinore does make some rather smart, if unexpected decisions.

Yasmine Galnorn's story focuses on a Selkie who had run from a marriage 100 years ago and is now pregnant and with a man she loves when her former, very dangerous fianc&eacute; catches up with her.  The story involves the D'Artigo sisters from the Sisters of the Moon series where we had earlier met this story's heroine.

Majorie M Liu provides the story of a princess who runs away looking for answers in a magical but dangerous forest a week before meeting with her intended, a fabled Warlord.  The kingdom needs this man, the son of her mother's best friend, as their ally as roving bands cause havoc and destruction.  She is rescued barely in the forest by a troupe of wandering performers and gets to be just Sally, keeping her identity a secret and falling for the leader of the group.  This is the most emotional story in the book.

Sharon Shinn's story takes roughly 40% of the book.  It involves a princess who refuses her father's demands to marry a neighbor who she's known all of her life but finds boring.  So to find a suitor and marry her off, he holds a series of challenges involving fighting ability, courage and wisdom; the winner gets to marry the princess.  Princess Olivia grows quite a bit in this story as she finds things aren't always as they appear.
1417151
This $170 million 'reimagining' of the Brothers Grimm classic is thin, unnecessary and painfully slow. Theron delivers the 'Disney acting guide to being an evil queen', alternatively over-acting and screaming while preening for all the CG airbrushing shots. Stewart provides her normal mouth-open stare that's somewhere between slightly stoned and trying to find the reset button - it's hard to remember that she's supposed to be the fairest of the them all. And then there are the dwarves, a CG shortening of regular actors, that are intended to provide comic relief but come across as strange and creepy.

Almost nothing in the script works very well. It starts very, very slowly, failing to build any real tension throughout, and the ending is foreshadowed so plainly from Act 1 that it couldn't have been more obvious. There are several set piece scenes that do nothing for the plot, the worst of which is a shiny fruit bowl that's supposed to be the mirror. Whereas the mirror in Shrek was a clever reworking of the Disney mirror, this mirror is like the fairy tale version of the T-1000 but without the same quality finish, and after two appearances is never mentioned again in the film. The same is true with the scene where Snow White tames a troll - after a fairly substandard fight sequence, she mysteriously becomes Snow the Troll Whisperer for absolutely no point whatsoever.

Even the story logic is really dreadful. The queen's brother tells the Huntsman that the queen can't bring his dead wife back to life at *exactly* the point where he should have said nothing. The queen fears the Dead Forest at the beginning but quite happily goes there later in the film. There are creepy asexual sprites hiding in the birds for no reason at all. It's a collection of ideas that don't gel or work together to move anything forward. ** Possible spoiler ** The finale is one of the worst I can remember with Snow White killing the queen in the most banal, simplistic way with no help from any of the characters she meets throughout - after two hours of the queen showing off her 'mad spellmaking skillz', she lets an overly-armored Snow White just walk up and finish her off. I was literally screaming at the TV in disbelief when this happened!

Finally, the film struggles to find a tone throughout. It's Joan of Arc meets Lord of the Rings somewhere in The Neverending Story but leaves the viewer realizing that Lord of the Rings is an incredibly well-made film and this is an excuse to extract $10. The world created here is devoid of any charm or magic and creates no lasting impression - and actually, that's not just the CG world but really the feeling I had about the whole movie. What a huge disappointment.
1740899
The premise of this novel is a familiar one: once upon a time a young and beautiful outsider/commoner married into a royal family, which treated her coldly and made her life miserable. The story of Princess Di is perhaps the most famous version of this tale. In "The Commoner," John Burnham Schwartz offers a Japanese variation on the story, in which the lovely and intelligent Haruko marries the Crown Prince of Japan, thereby gaining a  nice (but tradition-bound) husband, a life so severely constricted that it causes her to temporarily lose her voice, and a mother-in-law so cold that not even Helen Mirren could make her likeable. The trouble is, if you're writing a novel in which you work variations on a story that everyone knows by heart, you'd better have an idea about how to make it interesting.

Unfortunately, this novel is as stiff as its Imperial Household setting, with page after page of guidebook-like description of the niceties of royal weddings, ceremonies, and dinner conversation, padded out with dialogue so dull that you'll find your eye sliding down the page in search of something interesting. At one point in the novel, the Crown Prince, on his wedding night, begins to remove the first of the (many) layers of Haruko's wedding kimono, at which point the novel discreetly averts its eyes. We don't need to know what happened there, but one wishes the author had gone beneath the stylized (and sometimes stereotypical) surface of this story. To use the terminology of your 9th grade English teacher, these characters aren't "round," they're as "flat" as can be. If you, like me, enjoy books about Japan and want to read this one, wait until it hits the remainder table. But don't say I didn't warn you.
2658545
Catherine Pinkerton is envied by every young lady in Hearts  shes a beautiful girl of nobility whos sought-after by the King. She should be happy, and yet shes anything but. All shes ever wanted in life is to open a bakery of her own and sell her delicious treats to all of Hearts. But thats no life for a Queen, and it seems Catherine is destined to become one. As the King tries to wriggle his way into her heart, Catherine begins having strange dreams about a boy with black hair and amber eyes, a boy who makes impossible things possible. Catherine begins to fall in love, and its not with the King

Have you ever started reading a book and had just known you weren't going to like it? Everyone has their preferred genres. I, personally, am not big on fantasy, and even less a fan of retellings. In fact, when I received Heartless in my OwlCrate last year, I was pretty disappointed. I knew I had to read it, but I also knew I wouldnt enjoy it. Im happy to say I was positively wrong.

Heartless tells the origin story of the Queen of Hearts from Lewis Carolls Alice in Wonderland. In Alice, the Queen is nasty, cruel, and heartless  but why is she so? Melissa Meyer decided to give us the answer in her fantastic novel. Its a bit of a hefty read, but its worth it in the end. Its slow-going at first, but once you really get started, its hard to put down. Heartless is told in third-person following Lady Catherine, a young lady in Hearts. Though the King pursues her, she only has eyes for Jest, and this forbidden romance leads her down a dark path. But it seems she was always destined to walk this path.

Its very hard to read a book like this because you know how it ends. You know Lady Catherine becomes the Queen of Hearts because shes quite insufferable in Alice as such. But you're sitting there reading and you don't want her to become the Queen. Its very frustrating. Like watching a horror movie knowing the pretty blonde is going to die as soon as she opens the door. You don't want to watch, but you watch anyway.

Its hard to like Lady Catherine. On one hand, shes in an unfortunate situation and you have so much sympathy for her. But on the other hand, she makes silly mistakes and you know how shes going to end up. Dramatic irony at its finest. I did find myself sympathizing with her, even at the end, there.

It was fun to see so many characters from Alice making appearances  the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar, Hatta, Haigha But I have to say, Jest stole the show. Jest is such a dreamboat. Seriously, I know this is Wonderland and all, but books give us highly unrealistic expectations of boys. This is one romance you won't want to stop reading about.

Everybody has read Meyers The Lunar Chronicles. Well, everyone except me. I don't know, like I said, fairytale retellings don't really appeal to me. After Heartless, though, I may change my mind  the writing was really good. Ive seen reviews praising this novels improvement compared to The Lunar Chronicles, and Ive read some stating the opposite. Nevertheless, I think Meyer has a knack for YA writing, for romance, and for retellings. For such a dark novel, I would have liked a little more of an emotional connectionI felt a little disconnected from the story and the charactersbut other than that, I did enjoy the writing and the novel itself. In fact, I really liked the sameness between this and Alice. The characters voices were perfect, the mood was just right It was a very believable origin story. Im gad I read something out of my comfort zone, Im glad I enjoyed it, and Im glad OwlCrate gives me the opportunity to read books I wouldnt otherwise give a second glance.