Never After: The Thirteenth Fairy by Melissa de la Cruz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
View all my reviews
I received an eARC courtesy of Roaring Book Press/Macmillan Children's & NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
I am a HUGE fan of fairytales and retellings, so perhaps my expectations are running a tad high, but this book let me down. I love the attempts at modernizing and giving fresh takes on classic tales-seeing familiar faces like "Jack the Giant Stalker" in a new light is actually fun. But seeing other characters mentioned in passing for no real purpose other than name-dropping was a bit exhausting.
The other big downside to this was the abrupt ending. Just action-action-action, done.
Alright, moving to the positive. I enjoy the characters. I love the bits of humor. I think kids are going to love learning the "truth" behind classic stories. The pacing lends itself to a nice easy read and the cover art is fantastic! While this was not my favorite, kids are going to love it.
I'm also dinging this book for throwing the word "bad***" out at about the 60% mark. It kind of came out of nowhere and was completely out of place. I can only hope that was edited out of the final printing-not to sound prudish, but I like my kids books to be light on the swearing.
For Libraries: This is by the same author who penned the Descendants (yes of Disney musical fame), so it will undoubtedly be popular. I know my copy is already on order.
Publication Date: 1 December 2020
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