For three weeks I tried to read this book. Three weeks. I finally gave up. For these reasons: I hate all of the characters, the horror that was a massive info-dump, and the awful teen tropes (I'm looking at you love triangle).

The characters are all just shallow and unlikable. I mean I understand that they are supposed to be based on very two dimensional fairy tale characters, but if you are going to spend the time building a world you should also build your characters so the reader doesn't get so annoyed she wants to see what happens when she puts the pages in a immersion blender.

I also realize that this is the second book in a series (heaven help us) and that the world was developed in the earlier title. That does not mean we need 80 pages of info dumping. Bad info dumping at that. Families have fairy tale curses. I get it. Move on. If you have ever seen Once Upon a Time you get it already. A whirlwind of forgettable characters.

All of the teens magical or not fall into Mean Girl-esque tropes. I was hoping they would break out of those, but not at 50% of the way through.

I skimmed the rest of the book and was not impressed. There are much better fairy tale retellings out there that I would much rather hand my teens.

Netgalley ARC copy review.