You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
kaylee_reads_quietly 's review for:
Mother Knows Best: A Tale of the Old Witch
by Serena Valentino
This series keeps getting better!
Of the first five books in Serena Valentino’s Villains series, Mother Knows Best is my second favorite (behind Fairest of All, the first book).
Mother Knows Best goes into the most detail about the villain’s childhood, I thought worked very well for the progression of the book. We’ve always known that characters like Mother Gothel are “evil,” but no one ever truly tells us why—or how—she got that way. It’s so interesting to see what made these Disney villains so evil in the first place.
The whole first half of the book (almost 200 pages) takes place during Gothel’s childhood, long before Rapunzel is even born. The whole time, I’m flipping the pages, wondering, “Is she going to turn evil now? Is it this chapter? Where the hell is Rapunzel?” Knowing the part of the story that’s coming increases the anticipation of what’s to come, and that drove the story forward for me.
Some of the details in this book are more graphic and gruesome than the others, which took me a little while to get used to; this series hasn’t quite been this bloody. I also could have done without all of the exclamation points—they make the dialogue seem insincere after a while of overusing them. These two elements sort of contradict each other in terms of YA Fantasy.
More and more characters are starting to carry over from the earlier books in this series, and it’s creating a nice depth of plot. The stories are increasingly more complex now than what they were in the first and second novels, and the characters themselves are becoming more developed, too.
I’m excited to read Book 6 (The Odd Sisters), but I might have to put it off for a while to avoid impatiently waiting for Book 7 in the summer of 2020.
Of the first five books in Serena Valentino’s Villains series, Mother Knows Best is my second favorite (behind Fairest of All, the first book).
Mother Knows Best goes into the most detail about the villain’s childhood, I thought worked very well for the progression of the book. We’ve always known that characters like Mother Gothel are “evil,” but no one ever truly tells us why—or how—she got that way. It’s so interesting to see what made these Disney villains so evil in the first place.
The whole first half of the book (almost 200 pages) takes place during Gothel’s childhood, long before Rapunzel is even born. The whole time, I’m flipping the pages, wondering, “Is she going to turn evil now? Is it this chapter? Where the hell is Rapunzel?” Knowing the part of the story that’s coming increases the anticipation of what’s to come, and that drove the story forward for me.
Some of the details in this book are more graphic and gruesome than the others, which took me a little while to get used to; this series hasn’t quite been this bloody. I also could have done without all of the exclamation points—they make the dialogue seem insincere after a while of overusing them. These two elements sort of contradict each other in terms of YA Fantasy.
More and more characters are starting to carry over from the earlier books in this series, and it’s creating a nice depth of plot. The stories are increasingly more complex now than what they were in the first and second novels, and the characters themselves are becoming more developed, too.
I’m excited to read Book 6 (The Odd Sisters), but I might have to put it off for a while to avoid impatiently waiting for Book 7 in the summer of 2020.