Genre: Fairy Tales & Folklore

Go the Distance by Jen Calonit..

Posted 05/15/2021 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I am using a modified version of the CAWPILE rating system to do my review. If you’re curious about the CAWPILE system, check out this video by Book Roast! I’m going to be perfectly honest here – I’ve never watched Disney’s Hercules. Everything I know about it is from playing the first Kingdom Hearts game. That’s pretty much it. But, I love the Twisted Tales series, so I had to read Go the Distance regardless. The Characters Since I hadn’t seen the movie, I hadn’t really met Megara or Phil. To be honest, I know who Hades, Hercules, Hera, Zeus, and the other Greek gods are because I do have a thing for Greek mythology. But Megara and Phil were two characters I hadn’t met before. Philoctetes (Phil) Again, my only interaction with this character before was playing the Colosseum in Kingdom Hearts. I hated the character in Kingdom Hearts, […]

What We Devour by Linsey Mille..

Posted 05/12/2021 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

CW: Death Before I start, allow me to thank NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the opportunity to read and review this book. I wasn’t expecting I would get approved for this one, but I was pleasantly surprised when I was. Now… on to the review. The Characters So we all know that one of the things that can make or break a book are the characters. I have a few thoughts on some of the characters for you. Lorena I very much enjoyed Lorena’s character. The book is told from her point of view. She’s a great character. She’s unique in that she is only one of two people in Cynlira who have the pleasure of being “dualwrought”. She’s sassy, sarcastic, and quite frankly, she’s just my kind of character. She’s also loyal to a fault, unless, of course, you screw her over and she finds out about. Alistair (The […]

Tales from the Hinterland by M..

Posted 03/31/2021 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

CW: Violence, Death Tales from the Hinterland is the book of fairy tales that is featured in The Hazel Wood and The Night Country. Weirdly enough, I could never seem to get into either The Hazel Wood or The Night Country. Perhaps I just needed to read the fairy tales the fueled the story. I love fairy tales – the darker the better. I’m a huge fan of the original Grimm’s fairy tales. Yes, I do like the Disney versions as well, but in Grimm’s fairy tales, you don’t always have a happy ending. So it is with Tales from the Hinterland. These tales are dark, grim, and don’t necessarily have happy endings – although I suppose it does depend upon your point of view. The tales themselves are interesting – although one of them I recognized and I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve read a similar tale or […]

Serpent & Dove by Shelby ..

Posted 10/05/2019 by Charli in Book Reviews / 4 Comments

I’d been hearing about this book on Bookstagram, BookTube, and BookTwitter as an anticipated release for September 2019. And then the Barnes & Noble YA Book Club chose it as the book for the October 10, 2019 meeting. So of course, I picked up a copy as soon as I had the money. I’m definitely not sorry I did. Serpent & Dove is Shelby Mahurin’s debut novel. As such, it does suffer a bit from “first book syndrome” where the story starts off rather slowly and takes a bit to get into. In fact, the only reason I stuck it out was because when I went in to purchase November’s YA book club book, the bookseller who was helping me with my purchase told me she’d read the book and that it should start getting better around page 125. It took me a little longer than that – I had […]

A Grimm Curse by Janna Jenning..

Posted 07/25/2019 by Charli in Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Ok, I’m all for reimagined fairy tales. After all, just look at the reviews I’ve done for three of the Disney Twisted Tales books. I love a good reimagined fairy tale. Please note I said a good reimagined fairy tale. A Grimm Curse is not a good reimagined fairy tale. As a prequel, I honestly feel this book raises far more questions than it actually answers. It is all over the place and makes absolutely no sense. There are elements of Rapunzel, Cinderella, The Frog Prince, and even Jack and the Beanstalk in this book. Just in case you wondered, as a general rule, fairy tales don’t crossover. Yes, I know… they do in Into the Woods and Shrek, among others. And it works in those places. But it didn’t work here. There was so little of Jack in the Beanstalk it seemed like that addition was pure afterthought – […]