cozyescapism's profile picture

cozyescapism 's review for:

Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige
3.0

Three star books are the most difficult to review. Three stars usually hint at ordinary, and DOROTHY MUST DIE isn’t exactly ordinary. But it wasn’t exactly bad, and it wasn’t spectacular either. It might have been the hype that did me in on this one.

“Be brave. Be angry. Don’t trust anyone.”

This is a very original retelling of the Wizard of Oz. Very much like how SPLINTERED told a darker version of Wonderland, DOROTHY MUST DIE tells a very different story of Oz. Obviously. Just look at the title.

My main problem with this book was the lack of actual things happening. The setup is great, but when I really sat back and thought about it-the plot wasn’t going anywhere. And if you had the hardcover like I did, and you saw what the back promised then you most likely spent the entire book waiting for those points to come in to play. Or at least be mentioned. None of the stuff that was promised was even talked about until literally the last twenty pages of the book and even then, it was a very brief mention and made me go “What was the point?” to the rest of the book since nothing was really accomplished.

DOROTHY MUST DIE ends with a cliffhanger. It gives you more questions to add to the ones you still don’t know the answer to. The romance is pretty shaky, and the love interest could be a total jerk. However, I still did enjoy it.

The world building, characters, and originality totally saved this book. Emphasis on the characters. They are a very diverse cast, and all of them have unique traits and motives. I’m still questioning who is good and who is evil, and which side they are on.

I’ll be reading the sequel.