This book had me hooked from the beginning. I have always wanted to hear the villain's side in all the fairy tales! There was some repetitiveness in the writing, but the story flowed wonderfully. The only thing that really irked me was the ending. Everything was just wrapped up so quickly and neatly.
I don't know, it may just be me, but lately, that seems to be the norm for the books I have been reading. ( )

Loved this look into what made the evil queen who she was in the movies I grew up with. Really humanized the Evil Queen and made you really rethink the black and white of the good vs evil. ( )

I love retellings of fairy tales and this ending was perfect ( )

Oh the cheese...


I never thought I'd find a fairytale to be "too" cheesy for my tastes, certainly not one written by Serena Valentino, the writer of [b:Gloom Cookie|982911|Gloom Cookie Volume 1 (GloomCookie, #1)|Serena Valentino|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389952071s/982911.jpg|1636227] -the Bible of my teens- and [b:Nightmares & Fairy Tales|299134|Once Upon a Time (Nightmares & Fairy Tales, #1)|Serena Valentino|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1363887861s/299134.jpg|290224] -one of the best works of FSc and SLG publishing.

I understand that the undertaking of revamping a classic fairytale is difficult and overdone. More so when you are obliged to stick to the Disney version, which not only comes with many creative limitations but also sets the stage for your work to be compared with the rest of the retellings the Disney universe already has -not even counting the tv series Once Upon a Time which was released later than this book. I also understand that when writing for a young audience authors usually feel the need to focus on different things, use simpler words, or clarify certain feelings and situations eradicating any nuances in favor of making their work easily comprehensible.

I understand and I disagree.

I disagree that young adult books, and books for younger audiences in general, need to be one-dimensional. I don't think children and teenagers are incapable of complex thought and I certainly don't think that we can justify bad literature as "young adult" because "kids are dumb" and all that. No. Especially when we have an abundance of well written YA books that do not infantilize or patronize their readers. Some examples: [b:Un Lun Dun|68496|Un Lun Dun|China Miéville|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1170692699s/68496.jpg|2959401], [b:The Chocolate War|17162|The Chocolate War (Chocolate War, #1)|Robert Cormier|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333120554s/17162.jpg|1122617], [b:Something Wicked This Way Comes|248596|Something Wicked This Way Comes (Green Town, #2)|Ray Bradbury|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1409596011s/248596.jpg|1183550], [b:The Catcher in the Rye|5107|The Catcher in the Rye|J.D. Salinger|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1398034300s/5107.jpg|3036731], [b:Porci con le ali|3087171|Porci con le ali |Marco Lombardo Radice|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1322039103s/3087171.jpg|3118255], [b:A Wizard of Earthsea|13642|A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1353424536s/13642.jpg|113603], [b:Witch Child|803120|Witch Child (Witch Child, #1)|Celia Rees|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389898233s/803120.jpg|1347107], [b:The Last Unicorn|29127|The Last Unicorn (The Last Unicorn, #1)|Peter S. Beagle|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1358147318s/29127.jpg|902304], [b:Kamikaze Girls|759772|Kamikaze Girls |Novala Takemoto|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347770907s/759772.jpg|745873] the list is endless -not even including the Harry Potter series or John Green's books.
It's my pet peeve when people assume children/teenagers are incapable of complex thought, simply because it's not true.



The first chapters of Fairest of All are an overdose of cheese and sugar. The young not-yet-evil Queen is supposed to be full of love, the picture of virtue and kind-heartedness so as to make her transformation into a villain all the more shocking. The way this is communicated to the reader, though, is by making her repeat the same phrases about how much she loves her husband and his daughter and everyone really, again and again (example: calling Snow White "my little bird") so as to bludgeon us with the knowledge that yes, she is a very-very-VERY-good-not-bad-at-all person. The effect this has when it lasts longer than 100 pages (in a 250 pages long book) is annoyance and/or laughter. Had it been played for comedic effect, even nuanced in a meta way, this book would have been brilliant.

The Queen is presented to be so kind in fact, that she is almost bullied and tricked into evilness by three mysterious SUPER EVIL witches. Here I was left wondering. The point of this series is to find out what made the villains of these classic tales so bitter and cruel. You can't just pretend you have explained everything and answered all our questions simply by introducing new villains who, in a way, transfer their evilness to the original bad-guy of the story. That's not a solution to any mystery. It's a kind of cop-out that shifts the mystery of "why are they so evil" to new characters we don't care much about. A vicious cycle of evilness.

It's not that there weren't good original thoughts in this story, or that I regret reading it. I enjoyed the idea that the Queen had a poor self image and came from an abusive household. The need for constant affirmation from an authority figure, being starved for love but at the same time feeling unworthy of it, is a very touching, very real theme that not only is a believable justification of why this woman acted the way she did, but that also resonates with many peoples' actual experiences. It's really a shame that the story lost its way in describing how beautiful and kind everyone was, instead of fleshing-out the characters more in order to make them multi-faceted and not one-dimensional.



I could laugh off this amateurish kind of writing if it came from a new or unknown author. I am disheartened that Serena Valentino, whose name was the only reason I bought this book, the queen of revamping fairytales, or modernizing them and giving them a dark new twist, whose work -along with that of [a:Jhonen Vasquez|55743|Jhonen Vasquez|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1239072658p2/55743.jpg] and [a:Roman Dirge|45461|Roman Dirge|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1303760965p2/45461.jpg]- was the reason that SLG had those golden years between 1999 and 2008, the woman I have most admired in the comic industry for writing amazing stories exactly in this specific genre, wrote this mediocre cheesy mess.

I know it's unfair to judge someone harshly and with the utmost severity just because you claim to love their previous work and expect more from them. No-one owes you anything and it's certainly not the author's fault when you put them on a pedestal and have unrealistic expectations of excellence of them. This is why I'm putting it out there. Take this review with a grain of salt. Either I'm exaggerating or I'm right and at least some salt will balance out the spoonfuls of sugar this book forces upon you. ( )

Nice story from the evil queens perspective. It made me sad and a little irritated to watch her thinking negative thoughts and what not. Some of the story telling was simple with repetitive phrases. But, I enjoyed it, would read more in this series. ( )