Sarah Cross

I love fairy tale retellings. I love them hard. There's so much you can do with them. Suspend reality, create new worlds, figure out awesome systems of magic...oh my! The possibilities are endless for amazing things. This one though, I just can't even. I KNOW it's fairy tales. I KNOW it's fantasy. I KNOW it's not real...But for the love of all that is holy. You still don't make a 21 year old seducing a 15 year old (Fifteen. FIFTEEN!!! FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!) into something sexy. It's gross. show more Also, illegal. Please excuse me while I go vomit.

But beyond the squickiness of the story, I just couldn't get behind the characters. The only two I could find anything remotely likable about were Layla and Freddie, which is sad, because Freddie is as naive and odd as they come. Still, he's a whole lot better than the rest of this messed-up lot. Yeesh. I feel like I need to go bathe in hand sanitizer and brush my teeth a million times to get the creepy-crawly feeling off my skin and the sick taste out of my mouth. This book made me want to spout off every single foul word I know, but for the sake of my more sensitive friends here, I'll refrain and only think them. show less

When I first got my hands on this book, this is the review I came up with:

Reasons why you should read Dull Boy next weekend instead of going to see the new Transformers movie*:

1. Dull Boy is about teen kids with weirdo super powers. Transformers 2 (or whatever it’s called) is about a teen kid who is emo because he has to help save the world, like, again. GEEZ. Super powers will always win over emo whining. ALWAYS.
2. In Dull Boy, Girl Character 1 tells Girl Character 2 that her cornea show more should just take one for the team. In Transformers 2, Sam is whiny because dueling robots aren’t supposed to be his problem for, lo, he is in college now and too cool for these shenanigans, and then no one slaps him upside his stupid head. People telling other people to suck it up is way more gratifying than robots just letting their human friends complain that life is hard. Like, be assertive robots! You’re made of metal! Don’t let some punk kid sass you!
3. Dull Boy has a girl character wearing a homemade Marie Curie gangsta shirt. Scientists are, indeed, gangsta. Transformers 2 has Megan Fox in short shorts. Marie Curie and her radiation are bad ass. Megan Fox’s shorts are not. Although, she does have pretty awesome legs, so maybe this one’s a tie?
4. Dull Boy is witty and funny and sometimes completely absurd. Transformers 2 will probably only be one of those things. (Note: if Transformers 2 is witty I will eat my hat. Or I would, if I were wearing a hat. Which I’m not.)

See? Four reasons to spend the 12 bucks you would have used to go to the movies on a nice shiny copy of Dull Boy instead. There are probably more, but I need to go sell something on ebay now so that I will have enough money to buy my copy of Dull Boy and also see Transformers 2. I have a weakness for shiny robots that complements my yen for superheroes. Such is the burden of being me.

What? Four is not an aesthetically pleasing number? You want five reasons? Fine. Avery is a much cooler name than Sam. There. That's five. Are you happy now?

Good. My work here is done.

*all assumptions about said Transformers movie are from a single viewing of the trailer in the theatre, but whatever. I am sure I’m right. So there. show less

I do love a good fairy tale re-telling. Although, I'm not sure this qualifies as a re-telling as much as a re-living. The concept is interesting: Certain people are branded as fairytale icons and are, therefore, forced to complete the famous story at some point in their life. There are a myriad of fairy tales at play, but Mira's story is a combination of two. She's in the Sleeping Beauty tale, and the other one...well, to be honest, naming the other story is a TOTAL spoiler. But let's just show more say it's not a "common" one and it was So. Awesome.

The plot was a bit...wandering at times. Mira snuck out of her house, spent her savings and was prepared for the worst in order to find her parents grave and yet she was very, very distracted from this purpose for most of the book. I can understand this distraction once she figured out what was going on, but this was happening before she even knew what was going on.

I loved how Cross portrayed each of the real life fairy tales and what living with the blessing/curse was like in every day life. I actually found some of the secondary characters more intriguing than Mira because of how they were coping with their predetermined paths.

Like I said, I found the premise and the characters absolutely fascinating, even if I though Mira was a bit wishy-washy. I would certainly be interested in further books in this world, if only because I want to see how some of the secondary characters' curses play out. show less

Review Courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: Love, trust, and friendship are put to the test in this darkly beautiful modern take on fairy tales.

Opening Sentence: Birthdays were wretched, delicious things when you lived in Beau Rivage.

The Review:

Sarah Cross blends fairy tales with reality, and illustrates what that means for cursed teens as they learn about themselves and those around them. Mira, the protagonist, is an orphan who lives with her two strict, but loving godmothers. Mira show more is not allowed to do lots of things, including visit her parent’s hometown of Beau Rivage. Mira accepts her godmother’s rules as caring eccentricities except for the ban on Beau Rivage. A few days before her sixteenth birthday, Mira runs away and heads to the one place that she knows her parents were before they died.

Mira is stubborn and defensive, but just wants to feel like she belongs somewhere in the world. I think she uses scathing remarks to protect herself from getting close to someone who may one day leave and hurt her. She is also impulsive, and takes risks that might cause her harm. When she arrives in Beau Rivage with little money and no plan for what she intended to do once she got there, Mira hangs out in a casino until she can figure out what to do next. There she meets Blue and Freddie, two guys her age who warn her away from the casino that Blue’s family owns because he has a brother, Felix, who will take advantage of her situation as an orphan in an unfamiliar town. Mira scornfully rejects Blue’s pleas to leave, and hides out in the casino.

Blue is named so for his blue hair, and comes across as a rebellious teenager who has friends, but keeps them at a distance. He jokes around to hide his emotions, and does what he can to make girls, especially Mira, hate him. We find out later that this has to do with what type of curse he has. Freddie, on the other hand, is sweet, innocent, and and fiercely devoted. His personality also fits in with what type of curse he has. It turns out that many of the citizens in Beau Rivage have some sort of curse tied to familiar fairy tales.

There are all sorts of classifications of curses that play out over and over throughout history that Mira is confronted with. At first she doesn’t believe it, but she has a role to play like the others in town. Many of their curses are intertwined with each other. For example, one girl’s curse is to be hated and envied by her stepmother, and their gardener/general errand boy who loves and hates her will one day be ordered by the stepmother to cut out the girl’s heart. This is the classic Snow White tale for the modern age. The girl, Viv, treats the gardener, Henley with either disgust or admiration, causing mixed signals between them that may one day lead to her death. Mira learns that there are deadly consequences for choices she can make.

While Mira is learning more about the hidden part of her past and the other cursed teens in Beau Rivage, Blue’s brother Felix has been successfully romancing her despite everyone’s warnings about him. Mira has never felt like she was wanted romantically before, which is why she falls head over heels for Felix. It is only near the end of the novel and when her life is in serious danger that Mira finally confronts the truth behind the rumors about Felix. Mira learns a lesson in humility as she realizes that she doesn’t have to go through life alone, and should realize that there are more people out there who care about her than she ever realized.

Mira thinks that she can find out who she is by visiting her parent’s hometown, but instead is handed a new life that she never could have dreamed of, and it turns out for the better. I would recommend this novel for anyone who likes modern twisted fairy tales and vibrant, emerging romance.

Notable Scene:

“I want to show Mira.”

“Show me what?” Mira asked.

“Things you didn’t see before. Look between the cracks.”

Mira studied the crowd before her,not sure what she was looking for. A band played at one end of the street, and little kids danced to the music, waving balloon animals and toy swords. There were couples out on dates, hands creeping up the backs of T-shirts to fondle bare skin. Vendors hawked nylon fairy wings, funnel cakes, lemonade, art. Men and women lingered on the thresholds of bars, calling to friends, cozying up to strangers.

It seemed like any other place.

But then a pair of twenty-something girls caught her eye. Sister, maybe? They walked with the same awkward gait–a kind of limping sashay–and had the same pert noses and cascading dark curls. They limped along in a open-toed sandals, perfect pedicures marred by the white bandages they wore.

One girl’s heel was wrapped–and oddly shaped, like part of it was missing. The other girl wore a thick bandage where her big toe should have been.

They were Cinderella’s stepsisters, Mira realized–and this was the aftermath of their curse. In the tale, the stepsisters each cut off part of her foot in hopes of fitting into Cinderella’s tiny slipper. Mira hadn’t thought anyone would actually do that–but the sisters flaunted their injured feet like they were proud of them.

The sisters sensed her staring and glanced over, their eyes narrowing in unison. Blue waved hello, but instead of acknowledging him, they turned up her noses and hobbled away.

“They’re still so snobby!” Layla exclaimed. “You’d think that amputation would have humbled them a bit.”

“They thing they’re special because they avoided getting their eyes pecked out,” Blue said. “But really, it was just their stepsister being nice to them. She let them wear goggles to the wedding. It’s not that the birds didn’t try.”

“Of course not,” Layla sniffed. “Birds are diligent.”

FTC Advisory: EgmontUSA provided me with a copy of Kill Me Softly. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. show less