AUTHOR: Jane Nickerson
PUBLISHED: March 2013
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: Retellings, Historical Fiction
PREMISE: A retelling of the Bluebeard fairytale set in the eighteen hundreds.
MY REVIEW: I wanted to like this one way more then I did. Certainly it was ambitious. I liked that for once, the author chose a lesser known fairy tale instead of the usual Little Mermaid/Beauty and the Beast/etc. Granted, I don't really know the Bluebeard fairy tale all that well so I can't vouch for how well it's translated here. So this review is mostly focused on the story itself.
I loved Nickerson's writing. She's very a vivid story-teller. I literally could picture everything and had no problem understanding what was going on. So I may or may not pick up another book she's done. However...there were things in this that bothered me way too much. Number one was the slavery angle. It was white savior trope and badly done white savior trope at that. I could go on about how bad it is but I'll spare you my ranting. There also was a problem where every time it got to some of the darker aspects of the tale, the author suddenly shied away and would focus on lighter things like dresses or romance. It was kind of frustrating because some things in here were interesting but never explored the way they should have been in favor of the lighter things.
So it was a good idea....but I kind of wish the idea had been in the hands of a more seasoned author.
WHO SHOULD READ: Historical fiction fans
MY RATING: Three out of Five this could have been better frowns
I thought the slavery bit was so forced. She was so naive, like she didn't understand the true dangers of that sort of work.
ReplyDeleteCheck out my review at http://myviewpointonbooks.blogspot.com/2013/07/strands-of-bronze-and-gold-book-review.html :)