The Surface Breaks: A Reimagining of The Little Mermaid is a wonderful feminist take on the popular fairy tale. Louise O’Neill stays very close to Hans Christian Anderson’s original classic story (as opposed to the Disney version), but gives her little mermaid (Gaia/Muirgen) a much darker back story and provides a fuller description of the world that exists under the sea. Little mermaid Gaia has grown up under a misogynistic patriarchal system, where women are valued for their beauty alone. Gaia and her five sisters […]
That’s just the way it is, Things’ll never be the same
Considering all the hype that Angie Thomas’ debut novel has received, I honestly thought there was no way it could possibly live up to it. I assumed it would be a good book, even a great one, but I didn’t really expect it to leave such a lasting impression or to inspire this level of soul-searching. However, given the incredible reviews this book has gotten, I just had to pick it up and see for myself. Only a couple pages in, and I was hooked. […]
Hope is the thing with feathers
This Newberry Medal winning YA novel is a fantasy/fairy tale about hope’s triumph over sorrow. Kelly Barnhill writes about a world populated by witches, dragons, monsters, and humans. She writes of bogs, forests, and towns separated by fear and magic. In this world, one town in particular, the Protectorate, engages in a terrible human sacrifice every year, wherein the youngest child in town is left in the forest as a tribute to an evil witch. It is an age old practice, perpetuated by the town […]
Who is more human and who is the monster?
After giving glowing reviews to several other books by Victoria (V.E.) Schwab, multiple people have recommended her “Monsters of Verity” series. I recently picked up This Savage Song as a treat to celebrate the 25th birthday of my favorite independent bookstore. Considering how much I’ve enjoyed every other book by Schwab, I should have known better and gotten the second book in the duology, Our Dark Duet right away instead of foolishly only getting book one. I had the great pleasure of seeing Victoria Schwab’s panel at Wonder […]