I can’t resist retold fairy tales and I love Chainani’s writing style. He definitely kept the creepy factor while adding diverse and LGBTQ characters to his versions of these tales. This would be a great text as part of a fairy tale unit for high school students!

I really loved this retelling of familiar fairy tales. Chainani has a wonderful way of weaving what we have always known with what we know should be. Here, heroines (and sometimes heroes) are front and center in their own tales. They are the heroes of their own stories and don't need princes to save them.

Cinderella and Rumplestiltskin dropped the ball a bit, but on the whole, the book was beautiful. I especially loved Peter Pan and The Little Mermaid.

“So the men of Bagha Purana did what men do when they're well beaten by a woman and can't find a way to fight fair. They pointed their fingers at her and screamed, Witch!”


Synopsis
This book features twelve fairy tale retellings full of dark twists, triumphs and warnings.

Prose, Voice & Dialogue
Chainani's prose is absolutely stunning. It's so lyrical down to the last detail--including the fact that there were no quotation marks used throughout the whole book. This did make the dialogue kind of difficult to decipher at times, but I'm sure my ADHD contributed to that. The prose was stunning and so unique. His voice was very distinct, and the stories all feel very cohesive because, though they are different stories featuring different characters, we can tell that they are all written in the same voice.

Characters
Since this was an anthology of short stories, we didn't spend too much time with each character, and there are too many characters to name and discuss how I felt about each one. However, Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood stood out to me positively and were my favorite characters and stories. The characterization felt complete enough for the length of the stories, but I did find that I enjoyed the distance between the narrator and the main characters. This distance made each story very much feel like a fairytale--we weren't totally immersed in each story like we would be if each one were it's own book, but we didn't really need to be. I felt like I was sitting on a rug by the fireplace being told a beautiful, albeit often dark and twisted, fairytale.

Plot & Pacing
The storylines were changed just enough that there was a new, fresh aspect to each story, without being changed so much that it was unrecognizable. The only exception to this was the Sleeping Beauty story--I didn't fully understand what was happening or how it was based on the original story. My favorites stories were Snow White, Red Riding Hood and Peter Pan. Many of the stories made me cry, and I loved them for that. The pacing in each story was great, and I felt like they were all the perfect length. I didn't find myself getting bored at any point, and the stories were long enough that they felt complete, but short enough that my ADHD brain could sit through one whole story without getting bored.

The Romance
Not all of the stories featured romance, but the ones that did were well-done. The romance wasn't overbearing, and they felt more believable than most fairytale romances do. If I'm remembering correctly, there was some mlm romance, which I loved , especially because this book is marketed as a Middle Reader. It's so important for young kids to be exposed to all kinds of different relationships.

Setting
Each story had a different setting, and some were more developed than others, but all of them really helped evoke that fairytale feeling.

Overall Thoughts & Recommendation
This book is absolutely stunning. It was amazing, and I loved every story so much. I will say that I was surprised to find this in the "Middle Reader" section at Target, and even more surprised to see the age recommendation on the inside cover as ages 10 and up. I was a very mature kid who watched horror movies starting in kindergarten and was reading Dean Koontz by age nine, and I was really surprised that it was so low. There was a lot of talk about kissing, with some stories being very focused on kissing. One of the stories included descriptions of the bodies of a bunch of teenage boys who had been tortured and murdered by an adult man. There was death and murder in many stories as well, and the prose was even challenging for me to read at times (though this was in part because no quotation marks were used, like I mentioned above). So I would definitely say this felt more YA than Middle Reader, and should be age 12 or even 13 and up rather than age 10 and up. Of course, it all depends on the child--I would have loved this book at age 10, but my sister would have had nightmares if she had read this at the same age. If your child wants to read this book, I recommend reading it first yourself to see if you are comfortable with it because of the mature themes. Speaking of themes, beauty was a major theme throughout all twelve stories, and I loved the way it was handled. The book challenges the concept of "beauty" and how women are valued more for their looks than anything else. This is a great book for young kids to read for that reason, as long as they are old enough/mature enough to handle the other mature themes in the book. The stories are all written through a feminist lens, and I love Chainani for that. I recommend this book to anyone and everyone!

Trigger/Content Warnings
Kidnapping, some mild violence, torture (not shown on-page), murder, dead bodies

It was ok, it wasn’t what I was expecting. The Peter Pan story was my favorite.

Let me begin by saying that I love the spins on the classic fairy tales. Unfortunately, I don't dig the writing because it's almost too...conversational? That said, I'll bet the audiobook is fantastic.

- red riding hood: 3/5
- snow white: 1.5/5 - snow white is a beautiful black girl and, despite getting a happy ending, she goes through sooooo much antiblack abuse to get there and it felt really gross reading.
- sleeping beauty: 3/5
- rapunzel: 4/5
- jack and the beanstalk: 1/5 - this read like a man who calls his wife/girlfriend "ball and chain" writing a story like it's so sexist. the "nagging" wives are literal monsters.
- hansel and gretel: 4/5 - this was almost a 5 but it's another story of a woman being abused and women being abusive to each other. the man's punishment (if we can even call it that) felt like an afterthought.
- beauty and the beast: 3/5 - i'm happy that this is a simple chinese girl who wants to live in a nice home with her books, but i laughed so hard at beast's death lmao like there was no point to his role in this story other than to bequeath her everything she ever wanted.
- bluebeard: 4/5 - i cheered like go pietro but also omgg this story is horrifying.
- cinderella: 3/5 - this was SOOOOOOOO close to being a 5 if it didn't mislead me with the giant potential for a sapphic story. i love a good female friendship, but this was RIPE for sapphos and it didn't deliver. you can't give me a line like, "each morning, it is magdalena who lourdes looks for and magdalena who looks for lourdes" like i was bamboozled!!
- the little mermaid: 4/5 - ursula gives ariel good love/life advice and makes her realize her errors instead of letting her make a decision she'll regret and chasing after a man who doesn't even know her name. i wish ursula got a happy ending though like ariel could've stuck up for her or something.
- rumpelstiltskin: 1/5 - girl gets abused and punished for saying "no" to men and for enjoying taking care of her looks