A different and usually darker take on 12 generally well-known fairy tales: Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast, Bluebeard, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Rumpelstiltskin, and Peter Pan.

What I liked:
- most stories were adapted to include different cultures and races, and all touched on addressing cultural norms either from the original stories or as reflected in our current societies today.
- all were well-written as far as flow. The diction was consistently beautiful.
- many were unexpectedly different. Chainani did a nice mix of adjusted aspects to the original storyline, new epilogues, or what I can only describe as an alternate universe version of the story. The Little Mermaid was more of a single conversation between the Little Mermaid character and the Witch and completely shifted the story you knew had happened and would follow. That was interesting and kept me guessing for each story.

Why I couldn't rate it higher:
- sometimes I wasn't really clear by the end on what had happened. Some endings fell a bit flat while others went out with a bang. This feels like a normal results of a collection of short stories, but it still affected my interest and feeling like it was worth the read.

I never felt fully engaged for some reason, and I wish I could figure out why. I can devour books in a single sitting and frequently do, but I must have stopped and picked this one back up again 20 times despite its short length and even shorter stories within. Despite my admiration for the creativity of the tales, I merely liked it, but I also would have been fine not finishing it.