Christine Johnson (1)

A great collection of short stories that retell fairy tales. All of them were good, but some of them were absolute standouts.

Trigger Warning for child abuse.
Thinner Than Water by Saundra Mitchell is one of those standouts. "I’m the Princess of Flamen, and every night, my father— the king—comes to my bed." Merula is trapped. Her father's desire to marry her--to fuck her--is wrong and she knows it. But he's the King and no one, not even she, can defy him. So she creates challenges to show more delay their wedding. She wants a gown of sunlight, a stola of moonlight, a palla of starlight. And when her father the King produces all these things, she is trapped. What I loved about this story was Augusta Merula herself. She was angry, rightly so, and she made certain that every person collaborating with the King knew exactly what they were doing to her. And then she made her own plans to save herself.

Beast/Beast by Tessa Gratton is, of course, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. The Beast knows his part in the curse and the Beauty slowly finds hers. It's a sad, lovely story of Beauty finding her purpose and discovering herself.

Untethered by Sonia Gensler is a ghost story about a family's terrible loss. It's about mothers and daughters and sisters, it's about grief and coming together. It's about love.

Beauty and The Chad by Sarah Rees Brennan is a hilarious Beauty and the Beast retelling. Beauty believes in honor and The Chad misses his XBox.

(Provided by publisher) show less

I was surprised by how much I really enjoyed Claire de Lune. I read the second book "Nocture" in two days. I ended up liking it even better. "Nocturne" focuses more on Claire coming to terms with the fact that she is a werewolf. The first book had a huge mystery central to the plot. Claire was on a search to find out who was killing town residents while they were in their werewolf form. There is no such mystery here and that was a good thing. This book slows things down. It makes the show more characters the focus. This time around Claire is struggling with the secret life she must keep from her best friend Emily. There is a new girl at school named Amy who seems really nice but Claire resents her friendship with Emily. They seem to grow closer by the day as Emily and Claire seem to grow more distant from each other. I felt horrible for Emily. All she knows is that her best friend is starting to make excuses to be around her and she can't understand why. Amy is trying to make a real effort to befriend Claire but she is rebuked time and time again. Then there is Claire's boyfriend Matthew. Matthew found out about Claire in the previous novel and has been made into the pack's secret keeper. He is vowed to protect the pack's secrets even from his own father who is scientist trying to find a cure for lycanthropy. Now though, Matthew is acting distant from Claire. Is he second guessing his decision to protect the pack's identity or even his decision to date Claire?

"Nocturne" delves into these characters in such an entertaining way. I genuinely felt for each of the teenagers who were so impacted by Claire's secret. But Claire matures in this book. She was so taken off guard by discovering she was a werewolf that she became self centered. She acted like Emily's regular teenage life was so shallow and beneath her. It was nice to see her choose to balance the two sides of who she is. Yes, she is a werewolf, but she is still a teenage girl as well. The way she comes about realizing this was very exciting and it was a great way to finish off the book. Unfortunately the author doesn't have any more Claire books in the works but "Nocturne" really leaves Claire and friends in a nice place. I enjoyed both of these two books immensely and I can't wait to read further books by Christine Johnson. show less

Grim is a collection of classic fairy tales, but each comes with its own sinister twist. Edited by YA author Christine Johnson, she and other writers have taken the stories we all love and dragged them through the mud, spikes & thorns – allowing the tales to become equal parts wonderful and terrifying.

Each story will have you on the edge of your seat and always end in a way you never expected. Whether it’s a futuristic version of The Adventures of Pinocchio and its warped love story, or show more a poetic tale of surviving love when all seems frozen and cold, Grim challenges the tales you once knew. The book contains renditions of 17 classics, including “Puss in Boots,” and the famous “Beauty and the Beast.” The book even manages to make “The Three Little Pigs” more horrific than it already is.

Grim is magnificent and macabre. Some tales leave you reeling, and others need a reread, but each one is so well put together you start to think they’re how the originals were meant to be.

I would recommend this book because it managed to raise a whole new array of questions and still keep you turning the pages. Another plus is that, while interesting, it’s nothing close to a hard read, and the stories are all exciting, whether you know the tales beforehand or otherwise. show less

This is one of those books that, for me, set the tone from the very beginning. In the prologue as a reader you already have questions swimming through your head and you are hooked because you have to know who is doing these things. We are seeing through the eyes of the rogue wolf in the prologue and it gets the story off to a running start. The story for the most part revolves around Clarie, but every now and then we get a peak into the mind of the rogue wolf and those brief glimpses for me show more are very intriguing. The prologue sets a dark tone to the book, which does carry throughout the story, there are rays of sunshine beating into Claire's life periodically, but when you discover you are a werewolf at sixteen, you light is snuffed out just a little and I think the book reflects that well.

Claire is a good character, she is easy to relate to, and you are rooting for her from the beginning. You are also analyzing her love interest Matthew, because while he may like Claire, his father would forbid him from seeing her if he discovered what she truly was. That is what made me apprehensive about Matthew in the beginning. If he has had to listen to his father scream words of hate at the top of his lungs most of his life would it be so hard for some of that hate to seep through? Well, you will just have to read to figure that out for yourself because I do not want to ruin it for you.

This story also reminds me of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, wondering where I am going with this aren't you? Ok, well there is a line from there "Who is the monster and who is the man?" Well in this case it would be woman I guess, but this quote felt very appropriate to me for this book. While the main focus of the book spins around Claire and her dealing with being a werewolf, there is always that sub-plot of Matthew's father hunting the werewolves and assuming that they are all vicious creatures before getting all the facts. He has no care to find out the truth or be humane about it, he only wishes to kill the unknown and destroy anything foreign in his world. People like that just anger me, which was most likely how Christine meant for him to be, so in that respect she did a fantastic job.

I also like that in this book the werewolves are women. In almost all the other books I have read that deal with "were" of any kind, females are scarce, if not non-existent. So it was interesting to get new lore in this genre and a new outlook on werewolves. While the book does tie up most of the loose ends nicely I am still left wondering if there is more to Claire's story. There are still quite a few questions that linger for me and I wonder if there will be another book or if this will be a stand alone novel. Either way, it is a great debut for Christine and you should check it out if you have not already done so.

Language Love:

"Misery shimmered around her like an aura"

I like thinking that an emotion could radiate off someone so much that you can almost see it. That is why I like this line from the book. show less