fairy tales

Once Upon a River

Diane Setterfield

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5

Rated by

Meghan F

Fairy tales are often dismissed as stories only for children, but I've never been able to stop reading them, even as an adult. C.S.

Prince Sebastian has a secret, one no one can ever find out. At night, he wears beautiful dresses and takes Paris by storm as a fashion icon named Lady Crystallia. Only two people know his dangerous secret, and one of them is his best friend, Frances, his dressmaker. But she dreams of greatness as a fashion designer, but as long as she remains a secret, she will never be able to gain recognition for her work. But how long can she put her dreams on hold to protect her friend?

I loved how this book turned around the YA cliche of a girl dressing up as a guy, but I honestly loved...

I'm not a fan of gruesome, graphic, gory horror; however, I'm a big fan of stories that are dark. Atmospheric. Disquieting. Plumbing the depths of the human psyche. Some of those stories are creepy dark. Some of them are deliciously dark. The Hazel Wood is gritty dark.

Wealthy cannibals who dine on the limbs of peculiars. A princess with a forked tongue. The story of the first ymbryne. These are a few of the stories told in the Tales of the Peculiar, a book known to hide information about the peculiar world that was introduced in the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series. This book invites you to read this collection of original stories and learn some of the secrets of the history of peculiars.

I really enjoyed this short story collection. Really pleased with how all of the stories in this collection wrapped up and also how it tied in...

When a dangerous beast begins to terrorize the kingdom, fear panics the citizens. But soon a proclamation is sent out: kill the creature and win the ultimate prize: the daughter of the king’s hand in marriage. Princess Aerity understands her duty to the kingdom, but she can not bear to marry a complete stranger, until a mysterious young hunter catches her eye. She can’t deny her attraction to him, or his strange resentment against her. As they both continue to surprise each other, Paxton’s perilous secrets he has so meticulously buried begin to surface.

Fast paced with beautiful...

When Saville’s father is struck ill, she will do anything to survive, even pretending to be a boy to sew a fine coat for the king. But rumors are spreading about an immortal duke and his army of giants marching to seize the king’s throne. Soon, two giant scouts come and terrorize the city, but she tricks them into leaving. Stories of the brave and quick-witted tailor quickly turn into tales of giant-slaying. So it is left to the courageous and clever tailor girl to stop the duke’s army and save the kingdom.

I have to say I was a bit disappointed. The story itself was interesting but...

Kubo and the Two Strings

Laika

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5

Rated by

Rachel C.

"If you must blink, do it now. Pay careful attention to everything you see and hear, no matter how unusual it may seem. And please be warned, if you fidget, if you look away, if you forget any part of what I tell you, even for an instant, then our hero will surely perish."

Thus begins the saga of Kubo.

Raven Girl

Audrey Niffenegger

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3

Rated by

Sam S.

Raven Girl is the story of a girl-raven child produced by a lonely postman and the raven he fell in love with. It's a uniquely illustrated, dark, short novel—similar to Niffenegger's The Three Incestuous Sisters. The story opens with a postman rescuing a young raven who has fallen from her nest.

Every Heart A Doorway

Seanan McGuire

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4

Rated by

Josh N.

There's a long tradition of stories about children who stumble into another world, a fantastic world that works in completely different ways from our world. The children follow a talking rabbit down a rabbit hole or walk through the back of an old wardrobe or are swept up by a tornado and dropped onto an evil witch. At the end of the story, the child returns to our world a little wiser, but none the worse for wear.

Into the Woods

Stephen Sondheim

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5

Rated by

Caitlin T.

What a fabulous movie version of this amazing musical! This is arguably Stephen Sondheim's best musical with lyrics that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you rewind to listen to them again. Though I was nervous when the movie rights were sold to Disney, I was delighted to find they did not sugarcoat the potentially risqué topics of infidelity, child abandonment, and death.