By Sarah McGuire

This is another one of those stellar fairy tale retellings. I actually discovered it because my mom and my sister read it first and then told me to read it. This time, the fairy tale is the Six Swans, a classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale and another of my favorites.

The Six Swans starts out like many other fairy tales: the queen dies and the king remarries, but his new wife is an evil stepmother who hates his kids. But the stepmother in this story takes a different angle – she turns the hated sons into swans, and when the sister begs for mercy, tells her that in order to break the spell she must be silent for six (or so) years and make them cloaks out of nettles. During this period of silence, many things end up going wrong for our poor heroine (some versions are much worse than others).

This book pulled me in almost immediately. I really enjoyed the characters, especially the ones that weren’t necessarily in the original fairy-tale. I felt that this was a new take on an old story, even through the plot line was pretty much the same. Ryn (the sister) was a great narrator and I loved the dynamic with her brothers. You’ll like this book if you like books with fun/caring sibling relationships.

Another thing I loved was how creepy this book could get. Like, the kind of creepy where I had to stay up until 1 am to finish it, but I was able to go to sleep when I finished. It was really good, but could definitely be a bit unsettling at times (and sometimes just downright terrifying).

The end of this book was also so sweet. There were definitely parts that I read multiple times because they were so good. You will feel really good coming out the other side of this book, and you’ll want to read more by the author (which I may not have done…). Also, bonus points to this book for being one of the two books that got me out of a seven month reading slump.

There were two things that felt a little off in this book, the first was the time skips, and the second was the communication. Because this is a 400 page book that takes place over 6 years and most of the plot is in the first year and the last year, there are some times where it’s one year in one chapter and then the next chapter is a few years later, which felt a bit disjointed. It was good for moving the plot along, but a bit confusing. And then for communication, a big part of the story is that she can’t talk or make noise, so she communicates through pictures. Which is good, until she’s drawing out her life story for strangers, who somehow understand it.

But overall, this is a great book to read, especially if you’re into fairy tale retellings, and especially if you don’t really feel like reading.

General Stats:

• Genre: Fantasy (fairy tale)
• Standalone
• Age: 6th grade and above
• My rating: ★★★★★

By Edith Pattou

As fairy tale retellings go, this is a good one. East is a more modern version of the fairy tale East of the Sun, West of the Moon. Other traditional versions are called Eros and Psyche and Beauty and the Beast.

The general synopsis of the fairy tale is that a white bear comes to a poor man’s house and offers him riches in exchange for his youngest daughter. The daughter agrees to the trade, and she is carried off into the mountains where she has to live with the bear for a year. If you don’t know the story, I won’t spoil it here, but not everything goes according to plan.

This is probably the best retelling I’ve read of this fairy tale, which is one of my favorite ever. Others include Echo North by Joanna Ruth Meyer and Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George. This one may not be the most faithful to the tale, per se, but it has the best plot overall.

My main problem with this book that knocked it down from five stars to four stars was the family. As it usually is with these stories, the family is horrible. You’re supposed to hate them. But usually, they go away within the first thirty pages. This family came back. Especially when the main character, Rose, was just getting into something good, then we would go back to the family’s POV. Which I hated.

My only content warning here is that the romance is more upped in this fairy tale than in others. It’s clean, but there is romance. Which is why I’m saying that this book is more geared towards older middle school and early high school (that’s when I read it).

General Stats:

• Genre: Fantasy (fairytale)
• Book 1 of 2
• Age: 8th grade and above
• My rating: ★★★★☆