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A review by goldguardie
Emerald Bound by Teresa Richards
3.0
2.5 stars. Read my more entertaining review here.
I truly commend the author on picking a less mainstream fairy tale to retell! I like the Princess and the Pea and have found it super underutilized in the modern genre of retellings.
We end up following two different stories within this book--one in the present that follows Maggie and her missing BFF, and the other that tries to convey the origin story of the emerald as well as Lindy, the weird loner classmate who lived not only in the olden-day country of Valstenia, but also now...in Maggie's time. This makes the plot feel convoluted and disjointed....and really made it feel tedious and draggy.
Honestly, I didn't love this book. I was really looking forward to a neat retelling, but in my opinion it missed the mark and seemed to only extract the "object under the mattress" aspect of the original tale.
While parts of the story line were creative, I think what held my enjoyment of it back so much was that this was supposed to be a retelling, but just ended up its own separate story. The characters weren't very well developed and some of the revelations we get right at the ending seemed rushed and stuck in last minute because it was easy to make that the resolution.
Overall, this book was decently written and I smell a sequel brewing, but I don't think I will be reading anything else related to this book. If you're into YA chase scenes with a few fairy tale elements thrown in, you might be interested in picking up a copy!
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what I got from this: O needs to keep his damn gemstones under control. It also seems like there will be another book, but I probably won't be reading it.
I truly commend the author on picking a less mainstream fairy tale to retell! I like the Princess and the Pea and have found it super underutilized in the modern genre of retellings.
We end up following two different stories within this book--one in the present that follows Maggie and her missing BFF, and the other that tries to convey the origin story of the emerald as well as Lindy, the weird loner classmate who lived not only in the olden-day country of Valstenia, but also now...in Maggie's time. This makes the plot feel convoluted and disjointed....and really made it feel tedious and draggy.
Honestly, I didn't love this book. I was really looking forward to a neat retelling, but in my opinion it missed the mark and seemed to only extract the "object under the mattress" aspect of the original tale.
While parts of the story line were creative, I think what held my enjoyment of it back so much was that this was supposed to be a retelling, but just ended up its own separate story. The characters weren't very well developed and some of the revelations we get right at the ending seemed rushed and stuck in last minute because it was easy to make that the resolution.
Overall, this book was decently written and I smell a sequel brewing, but I don't think I will be reading anything else related to this book. If you're into YA chase scenes with a few fairy tale elements thrown in, you might be interested in picking up a copy!
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what I got from this: O needs to keep his damn gemstones under control. It also seems like there will be another book, but I probably won't be reading it.