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tyzaa's review against another edition
5.0
I read this book overnight. Because why not.
So I picked up the Surface Breaks for 3 main reasons:
- One of my favourite authors mentioned it
- The cover is omg
- The Little Mermaid has always been one of my all time favourite Disney movies.
But! Having rewatched this classic animation movie recently, I was seriously torn and conflicted: the child in me sang along and fell in love with Eric all over again, and the adult in me was angry at the plot. Goddamit adulthood and morals!
And the book delivers what it says on the tin: it rewrites the story and gives it a modern twist.
So yes, there is a pretty strong social justice bias. But it works. It works as a good illustration and narrative around how things were, and how things have and are evolving withing peoples mentalities, whilst giving a more mature and realistic spin to our/my favourite childhood fairytales.
Also please, can we have a spinoff with Ceto?
So I picked up the Surface Breaks for 3 main reasons:
- One of my favourite authors mentioned it
- The cover is omg
- The Little Mermaid has always been one of my all time favourite Disney movies.
But! Having rewatched this classic animation movie recently, I was seriously torn and conflicted: the child in me sang along and fell in love with Eric all over again, and the adult in me was angry at the plot. Goddamit adulthood and morals!
And the book delivers what it says on the tin: it rewrites the story and gives it a modern twist.
So yes, there is a pretty strong social justice bias. But it works. It works as a good illustration and narrative around how things were, and how things have and are evolving withing peoples mentalities, whilst giving a more mature and realistic spin to our/my favourite childhood fairytales.
Also please, can we have a spinoff with Ceto?
wordsbychiara's review against another edition
5.0
Being a lover of the Little Mermaid in all its shapes and sizes, I am constantly hoping to find retellings of this classic fairytale, and I am thrilled that so many of them are being released this year!
When approaching this book, I was expecting to find all those elements from the classic fairytale spun in an original way. I foundthat, but I also found so much more. What I was not expecting was that I would find so many important social issues woven inside it.
As a woman reading this story, I couldn’t help but feel pure, undiluted anger at the woman condition represented. I hope that in 2018, a man reading this book would also feel a sense of injustice swimming through these pages. The mer-folk live under the bigot rule of the Sea King, where the men expect the mermaids to be beautiful, meek, obedient. A mermaid who has her opinions, who speaks her mind, who has passions and desires that are not what the men choose for them is not a good mermaid, and must be exiled. Like a doll, the women must simply exist to please men and their desires. What was even more heartbreaking about all of this was that on land, things were not much better. Women must work twice as hard to have their voices heard, and even then ”you’re beautiful”, “you’re perfect”, “you’re graceful” will come before “you’re smart, “you’re hardworking” “you’re talented”.
Reading about this kind of insubordination is difficult, but when you take a step back and realize that this is what happens in the real world, where men and women still do not get the same retribution for the same jobs, where there are daughters who must still submit to their fathers, where wives must still submit to their husbands. A world where women still endure the abuses of men who do not understand the meaning of the word “no” and who think they are entitled to taking our bodies with or without our consent.
Louise O’Neill takes all this injustice and weaves it masterfully in her retelling, but she doesn’t simply limit herself to showing the problems in all their minute details. She offers a solution.
In a world that wants us all to be the same, where beautiful means silent, skinny, desirable, this book urges us to break the chain and celebrate our diversities in all their forms and in all their beauty. In a world that puts women one against the other, this book shows us that when we join forces we can bring change.
The Surface Breaks is more than just a simple fairytale retelling about giving away too much too easily. This is a story about pain, about loss, about hope, where fiction and reality merge into one and before which one cannot simply remain indifferent.
So to wrap it up, this is a book that I recommend not just to lovers of mermaids and fairytales, but to any woman and man who comes across it. Read this book, get angry and get involved to make a change into this beautiful but wounded world.
When approaching this book, I was expecting to find all those elements from the classic fairytale spun in an original way. I foundthat, but I also found so much more. What I was not expecting was that I would find so many important social issues woven inside it.
As a woman reading this story, I couldn’t help but feel pure, undiluted anger at the woman condition represented. I hope that in 2018, a man reading this book would also feel a sense of injustice swimming through these pages. The mer-folk live under the bigot rule of the Sea King, where the men expect the mermaids to be beautiful, meek, obedient. A mermaid who has her opinions, who speaks her mind, who has passions and desires that are not what the men choose for them is not a good mermaid, and must be exiled. Like a doll, the women must simply exist to please men and their desires. What was even more heartbreaking about all of this was that on land, things were not much better. Women must work twice as hard to have their voices heard, and even then ”you’re beautiful”, “you’re perfect”, “you’re graceful” will come before “you’re smart, “you’re hardworking” “you’re talented”.
Reading about this kind of insubordination is difficult, but when you take a step back and realize that this is what happens in the real world, where men and women still do not get the same retribution for the same jobs, where there are daughters who must still submit to their fathers, where wives must still submit to their husbands. A world where women still endure the abuses of men who do not understand the meaning of the word “no” and who think they are entitled to taking our bodies with or without our consent.
Louise O’Neill takes all this injustice and weaves it masterfully in her retelling, but she doesn’t simply limit herself to showing the problems in all their minute details. She offers a solution.
In a world that wants us all to be the same, where beautiful means silent, skinny, desirable, this book urges us to break the chain and celebrate our diversities in all their forms and in all their beauty. In a world that puts women one against the other, this book shows us that when we join forces we can bring change.
The Surface Breaks is more than just a simple fairytale retelling about giving away too much too easily. This is a story about pain, about loss, about hope, where fiction and reality merge into one and before which one cannot simply remain indifferent.
So to wrap it up, this is a book that I recommend not just to lovers of mermaids and fairytales, but to any woman and man who comes across it. Read this book, get angry and get involved to make a change into this beautiful but wounded world.
bibliorow's review against another edition
3.0
I was disappointed with this book because I was so excited to read it and expecting a lot from it, and within the first few chapters I just thought, oh. The whole story just reads like fanfiction, and there were so many typos and grammar mistakes that I definitely felt like I was just reading a fic on AO3. I feel like all the attention went into creating the cover and designing the book and none of the attention went into the story. But I didn’t hate it! It got better towards the end, and I started to like it about halfway through. I loved the feminist interpretation and I liked the author’s spin on it. I was just a little let down.
arami_heartilly's review against another edition
4.0
Clever and insightful. A very interesting read that says as much with what’s written on the page as with the subtext within it. The only thing I wanted was an epilogue. But I understand why there wasn’t one.
verzinselinzee's review against another edition
3.0
2,5 ster
Dit boek is 97% een hertelling van de kleine zeemeermin en absoluut geen kritische feministische herschrijving zoals de hype je doet geloven. De hoofdpersoon is grotendeels van het boek bezig met pijnlijk de liefde van haar leven te veroveren terwijl ze slachtoffer is van patriarchaal misbruik. En sorry voor de spoiler maar de laatste 20 pagina’s haar opeens laten veranderen in een wraakheks en alle mannen willen vermoorden? Dat is even leuk maar ook erg makkelijk “feminisme” punten scoren.
Het enige leuke aan dit boek waren de zeeheks (geef me een ursula herschrijving!!!) en het bestaan van lesbische zeemeerminnen.
Dit boek is 97% een hertelling van de kleine zeemeermin en absoluut geen kritische feministische herschrijving zoals de hype je doet geloven. De hoofdpersoon is grotendeels van het boek bezig met pijnlijk de liefde van haar leven te veroveren terwijl ze slachtoffer is van patriarchaal misbruik. En sorry voor de spoiler maar de laatste 20 pagina’s haar opeens laten veranderen in een wraakheks en alle mannen willen vermoorden? Dat is even leuk maar ook erg makkelijk “feminisme” punten scoren.
Het enige leuke aan dit boek waren de zeeheks (geef me een ursula herschrijving!!!) en het bestaan van lesbische zeemeerminnen.
lorintheninth's review against another edition
4.0
A feminist retelling of one of my favourite fairy tales. Family secrets. The sea. What’s not to love?
This is the first Louise O’Neill book I’ve read and I very much enjoyed it. It definitely read like a YA book, which is something to bear in mind if you’ve read her adult novels and are hoping for similar.
I absolutely loved the main character. She irritated me at the start, as I think you’d expect, but after the first third of the book I just wanted to hug her. Her character development was superb and I loved seeing the world, both under and above the sea, through her eyes.
The portrayal of ‘the patriarchy’, I guess, was so accurate I did have to put the book down and step away a few times. The Sea King was so real and reminded me so much of my childhood it was as if O’Neill had flicked through my memories and picked out the worst ones. It was sensitively handled however and I wouldn’t let this put you off, just something to be aware of.
The writing was beautiful and profound at times, without making it seem inaccessible. It is feminist without explicitly using that word, which I think was the right decision in the context of a YA book - in the same vein however, I would love to read an adult retelling of The Little Mermaid by O’Neill as I think she would do wonders with the darker side of history.
There were a few minor issues I had with the pacing and plot however. I felt that some things had been rushed towards the end and some twists could have been revealed in a more evenly spaced out manner. These are just minor issues I had, but did knock it down from a 5 star read.
Overall I want Louise O’Neill to release both a second book in this world, and secondly more retellings of fairy tales. I thoroughly enjoyed this and if you are interested in, I’d recommend you just take the plunge. Pun intended.
This is the first Louise O’Neill book I’ve read and I very much enjoyed it. It definitely read like a YA book, which is something to bear in mind if you’ve read her adult novels and are hoping for similar.
I absolutely loved the main character. She irritated me at the start, as I think you’d expect, but after the first third of the book I just wanted to hug her. Her character development was superb and I loved seeing the world, both under and above the sea, through her eyes.
The portrayal of ‘the patriarchy’, I guess, was so accurate I did have to put the book down and step away a few times. The Sea King was so real and reminded me so much of my childhood it was as if O’Neill had flicked through my memories and picked out the worst ones. It was sensitively handled however and I wouldn’t let this put you off, just something to be aware of.
The writing was beautiful and profound at times, without making it seem inaccessible. It is feminist without explicitly using that word, which I think was the right decision in the context of a YA book - in the same vein however, I would love to read an adult retelling of The Little Mermaid by O’Neill as I think she would do wonders with the darker side of history.
There were a few minor issues I had with the pacing and plot however. I felt that some things had been rushed towards the end and some twists could have been revealed in a more evenly spaced out manner. These are just minor issues I had, but did knock it down from a 5 star read.
Overall I want Louise O’Neill to release both a second book in this world, and secondly more retellings of fairy tales. I thoroughly enjoyed this and if you are interested in, I’d recommend you just take the plunge. Pun intended.
thekaleychapters's review against another edition
4.0
The Little Mermaid story everyone needs to read! Female rage in its best form!
lottiezeb's review against another edition
To be perfectly honest this book did not work for me at all. I’ve wrestled with my inner demons and locked Unnecessarily Mean Goodreads Review Charlotte deep, deep underground, but there are a lot of things that I really disliked here. If this review ever veers away from being reasonably critical and just becomes nasty, please let me know!
So What's It About?
Deep beneath the sea, off the cold Irish coast, Gaia is a young mermaid who dreams of freedom from her controlling father. On her first swim to the surface, she is drawn towards a human boy. She longs to join his carefree world, but how much will she have to sacrifice? What will it take for the little mermaid to find her voice? Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale is reimagined through a searing feminist lens, with the stunning, scalpel-sharp writing and world building that has won Louise her legions of devoted fans. A book with the darkest of undercurrents, full of rage and rallying cries: storytelling at its most spellbinding.
What I Thought
It’s easy to take shots at classic fairy tales for their Lack of Girl Power and Poor Female Role Models, and The Little Mermaid is no exception - after all, it’s the one where she literally silences herself and changes her body for a man!!! The Surface Breaks is clearly written with the intent of reworking the original tale to bear a feminist message. I respect that initiative, but I have problems with almost every part of how O’Neill went about doing this.
One of my biggest issues here is Gaia herself as a narrator. She begins the story as an incredibly cowed, self-hating girl who is powerless and indoctrinated by her culture’s sexism. That’s a pretty interesting place to start a character, in my opinion, but the problem is that O’Neill still uses her as the mouthpiece for dozens of astute observations about the injustice of sexism while she's had no character development. The mini-feminist monologues make absolutely no sense when she declares them and turns back around and silently trails her prince around his mansion, still desperate to win his love. The other problem is that she makes some of these observations specifically about the human world as opposed to the mermaid land, and there is no way that the character herself could know anything about lecherous Catholic priests or corporate harassment culture.
Some of these declarations feel rather misguided in my opinion, such as the time that a male character says women aren’t funny and Gaia reflects to herself that, well, maybe women would be funny if they weren’t taught that they had to spend all their time laughing at men’s jokes. This is such a bizarre take to me, because who on earth makes a feminist rebuttal to the Women Aren’t Funny schtick by agreeing that women are not, in fact, funny? The misguided messages carry over to the book’s handling of its themes of sexual violence and abuse; at one point the empowered, liberated Witch Queen - who acts as the main voice of morality and wisdom in the book - looks at Gaia with contempt and rhetorically asks her if she thinks she’s had it rough compared to the traumatized mermaids that the Witch Queen takes care of, concluding that Gaia doesn’t know anything about suffering. I am willing to doubt that a book should be marketed as a #MeToo read for teens when it legitimately “ranks” characters’ trauma and tells a girl who has been dealing with male violence her whole life to suck it up and be grateful that it wasn’t worse, especially after she has experienced an attempted rape mere pages before the conversation in question.
Another utterly bizarre moment is when a woman gets called crazy and Gaia says the following:
“She’s crazy, we used to say about maids in the kingdom who pursued certain mer-men relentlessly, crying and asking too many questions about where their man was and who he was with and if he had talked to any other maid that day. I’m beginning to wonder if, when we call a woman crazy, we should take a look at the man by her side and guess at what he has done to drive her to insanity.”
What I THINK this is trying to say is that sometimes abusive, toxic men paint their victims as the crazy ones and there is a long history of pathologizing women’s suffering when it actually stems from outside sources so we should take a closer look at relationships before we simply accept that a woman is a hysterical bitch etc etc. But that’s not what this passage is actually saying, because the women described in the passage are the ones who are jealous and possessive and refuse to respect boundaries, right? So the inadvertent message here, to me, is that when a woman is actually jealous and possessive and refuses to respect boundaries, we should simply look at her male partner and figure out what he did to “drive her to it.” I sincerely hope that this is just writing that could have used more editing and not the intended message here.
I actually really like the fundamental premise that a princess who grows up in a horribly sexist world decides that instalove with a handsome boy will save her from her troubles, but then she ultimately realizes her own power and saves herself. She realizes that the prince who sweeps you off your feet (tail?) is just a dream and no man is worth mutilating and silencing yourself for. That’s more or less what happens here, but, as I mentioned, a huge problem is that all of her learning and character development happens at the very end, in the final conversation with the Sea Witch, and she simply spends the rest of her time on land as Oliver’s devoted second shadow. It could have been so much more effective, especially if she had interacted with interesting women on the surface. As it is, there is just Oliver’s mother - a girlboss facing the glass ceiling who is injudiciously hated by her son but hates Gaia just as much as Oliver hates her - and Gaia’s devoted servant who brews her gallons of homemade pain medicine and tends to her disintegrating feet every day.
And at the end of the day, Gaia's final realization about Oliver isn’t actually that she shouldn’t have tortured herself for his sake and pinned all of her hopes on a man she didn’t know - it’s that she was wrong in thinking men just cared about good looks - they actually like a girl who is smart and funny and has interesting opinions. Why is that the limit of how far the envelope is pushed for this part of the story - why is The Lesson about Oliver still about how to win a man?
Of course, the story goes further in the last bit when she That’s definitely a much stronger ending, but I do question the efficacy of her transformation into a powerful new form being predicated on . I don’t know - I think different readers will feel differently about that bit.
The book does its best to cover so many topics - eugenics, colonialism, gay rights, body image, corporate sexism, beauty standards, rape culture, abuse - but it ends up reducing each one to a surface level line or two in one of Gaia’s monologues, and none of it is handled with a great amount of nuance or depth. There were a few moments that felt so horribly on the nose to me, like when Gaia dismisses Zale’s sexist comment as “just mer-man talk - stop being so sensitive” or talks about the underwater kingdom being “made great again” by her father’s rule.
A few final notes - we never really explore the fact that Gaia chooses to kill Oliver’s girlfriend in order to save his life, and the fact that she is able to do so doesn’t even make sense. The Salkas specifically prey on human men for their misandrist revenge, so why would they accept a teenage girl in his place? Occasionally it is almost like the author forgets what setting she is writing in, both underwater on the surface. There are a few times that she describes the environment in the mermaid kingdom as “the air” and at one point Gaia inexplicably refers to a conch shell by its Latin name. I can’t fathom why Oliver and his family don’t attempt to teach Gaia sign language or how to read and write once they realize she is mute and illiterate. And on the point of that muteness…I ended up consulting with Goodreads because the day after Ceto cuts out Gaia’s tongue, she is able to happily eat a bowl of porridge. My friends’ estimates of the damage done by a cut-out tongue varied widely, but one and all agreed that you definitely wouldn’t be able to eat the next day. I KNOW that Ceto doesn’t use witch magic to heal her, either, because when the human doctor inspects her, everyone is horrified by the raw wound in her mouth!!!!! Finally, the writing is neutral overall but the mermaid characters switch between saying “okay” to each other and using pseudo-fantasy language. The strangest bit of writing to me is when Gaia imagines herself doing something difficult and, referring to herself, says “it is heavy, is it not, little one?”
I’ve now been talking about feminist mermaids for a long time. Too long, perhaps? In any case, this one really did not work for me at all. For books that I personally prefer in the YA Feminist Fairy Tale Genre, I would recommend [b:Stepsister|41473840|Stepsister|Jennifer Donnelly|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1537558055l/41473840._SY75_.jpg|57964830] and [b:Damsel|36260155|Damsel|Elana K. Arnold|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1518818837l/36260155._SY75_.jpg|57912874].
So What's It About?
Deep beneath the sea, off the cold Irish coast, Gaia is a young mermaid who dreams of freedom from her controlling father. On her first swim to the surface, she is drawn towards a human boy. She longs to join his carefree world, but how much will she have to sacrifice? What will it take for the little mermaid to find her voice? Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale is reimagined through a searing feminist lens, with the stunning, scalpel-sharp writing and world building that has won Louise her legions of devoted fans. A book with the darkest of undercurrents, full of rage and rallying cries: storytelling at its most spellbinding.
What I Thought
It’s easy to take shots at classic fairy tales for their Lack of Girl Power and Poor Female Role Models, and The Little Mermaid is no exception - after all, it’s the one where she literally silences herself and changes her body for a man!!! The Surface Breaks is clearly written with the intent of reworking the original tale to bear a feminist message. I respect that initiative, but I have problems with almost every part of how O’Neill went about doing this.
One of my biggest issues here is Gaia herself as a narrator. She begins the story as an incredibly cowed, self-hating girl who is powerless and indoctrinated by her culture’s sexism. That’s a pretty interesting place to start a character, in my opinion, but the problem is that O’Neill still uses her as the mouthpiece for dozens of astute observations about the injustice of sexism while she's had no character development. The mini-feminist monologues make absolutely no sense when she declares them and turns back around and silently trails her prince around his mansion, still desperate to win his love. The other problem is that she makes some of these observations specifically about the human world as opposed to the mermaid land, and there is no way that the character herself could know anything about lecherous Catholic priests or corporate harassment culture.
Some of these declarations feel rather misguided in my opinion, such as the time that a male character says women aren’t funny and Gaia reflects to herself that, well, maybe women would be funny if they weren’t taught that they had to spend all their time laughing at men’s jokes. This is such a bizarre take to me, because who on earth makes a feminist rebuttal to the Women Aren’t Funny schtick by agreeing that women are not, in fact, funny? The misguided messages carry over to the book’s handling of its themes of sexual violence and abuse; at one point the empowered, liberated Witch Queen - who acts as the main voice of morality and wisdom in the book - looks at Gaia with contempt and rhetorically asks her if she thinks she’s had it rough compared to the traumatized mermaids that the Witch Queen takes care of, concluding that Gaia doesn’t know anything about suffering. I am willing to doubt that a book should be marketed as a #MeToo read for teens when it legitimately “ranks” characters’ trauma and tells a girl who has been dealing with male violence her whole life to suck it up and be grateful that it wasn’t worse, especially after she has experienced an attempted rape mere pages before the conversation in question.
Another utterly bizarre moment is when a woman gets called crazy and Gaia says the following:
“She’s crazy, we used to say about maids in the kingdom who pursued certain mer-men relentlessly, crying and asking too many questions about where their man was and who he was with and if he had talked to any other maid that day. I’m beginning to wonder if, when we call a woman crazy, we should take a look at the man by her side and guess at what he has done to drive her to insanity.”
What I THINK this is trying to say is that sometimes abusive, toxic men paint their victims as the crazy ones and there is a long history of pathologizing women’s suffering when it actually stems from outside sources so we should take a closer look at relationships before we simply accept that a woman is a hysterical bitch etc etc. But that’s not what this passage is actually saying, because the women described in the passage are the ones who are jealous and possessive and refuse to respect boundaries, right? So the inadvertent message here, to me, is that when a woman is actually jealous and possessive and refuses to respect boundaries, we should simply look at her male partner and figure out what he did to “drive her to it.” I sincerely hope that this is just writing that could have used more editing and not the intended message here.
I actually really like the fundamental premise that a princess who grows up in a horribly sexist world decides that instalove with a handsome boy will save her from her troubles, but then she ultimately realizes her own power and saves herself. She realizes that the prince who sweeps you off your feet (tail?) is just a dream and no man is worth mutilating and silencing yourself for. That’s more or less what happens here, but, as I mentioned, a huge problem is that all of her learning and character development happens at the very end, in the final conversation with the Sea Witch, and she simply spends the rest of her time on land as Oliver’s devoted second shadow. It could have been so much more effective, especially if she had interacted with interesting women on the surface. As it is, there is just Oliver’s mother - a girlboss facing the glass ceiling who is injudiciously hated by her son but hates Gaia just as much as Oliver hates her - and Gaia’s devoted servant who brews her gallons of homemade pain medicine and tends to her disintegrating feet every day.
And at the end of the day, Gaia's final realization about Oliver isn’t actually that she shouldn’t have tortured herself for his sake and pinned all of her hopes on a man she didn’t know - it’s that she was wrong in thinking men just cared about good looks - they actually like a girl who is smart and funny and has interesting opinions. Why is that the limit of how far the envelope is pushed for this part of the story - why is The Lesson about Oliver still about how to win a man?
Of course, the story goes further in the last bit when she
Spoiler
kills her father and tells her sisters to reclaim their power. She dedicates herself to the Sea Witch and her Salkas, determined to destroy the merman patriarchy.Spoiler
killing herselfThe book does its best to cover so many topics - eugenics, colonialism, gay rights, body image, corporate sexism, beauty standards, rape culture, abuse - but it ends up reducing each one to a surface level line or two in one of Gaia’s monologues, and none of it is handled with a great amount of nuance or depth. There were a few moments that felt so horribly on the nose to me, like when Gaia dismisses Zale’s sexist comment as “just mer-man talk - stop being so sensitive” or talks about the underwater kingdom being “made great again” by her father’s rule.
A few final notes - we never really explore the fact that Gaia chooses to kill Oliver’s girlfriend in order to save his life, and the fact that she is able to do so doesn’t even make sense. The Salkas specifically prey on human men for their misandrist revenge, so why would they accept a teenage girl in his place? Occasionally it is almost like the author forgets what setting she is writing in, both underwater on the surface. There are a few times that she describes the environment in the mermaid kingdom as “the air” and at one point Gaia inexplicably refers to a conch shell by its Latin name. I can’t fathom why Oliver and his family don’t attempt to teach Gaia sign language or how to read and write once they realize she is mute and illiterate. And on the point of that muteness…I ended up consulting with Goodreads because the day after Ceto cuts out Gaia’s tongue, she is able to happily eat a bowl of porridge. My friends’ estimates of the damage done by a cut-out tongue varied widely, but one and all agreed that you definitely wouldn’t be able to eat the next day. I KNOW that Ceto doesn’t use witch magic to heal her, either, because when the human doctor inspects her, everyone is horrified by the raw wound in her mouth!!!!! Finally, the writing is neutral overall but the mermaid characters switch between saying “okay” to each other and using pseudo-fantasy language. The strangest bit of writing to me is when Gaia imagines herself doing something difficult and, referring to herself, says “it is heavy, is it not, little one?”
I’ve now been talking about feminist mermaids for a long time. Too long, perhaps? In any case, this one really did not work for me at all. For books that I personally prefer in the YA Feminist Fairy Tale Genre, I would recommend [b:Stepsister|41473840|Stepsister|Jennifer Donnelly|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1537558055l/41473840._SY75_.jpg|57964830] and [b:Damsel|36260155|Damsel|Elana K. Arnold|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1518818837l/36260155._SY75_.jpg|57912874].