Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy to review.

From the concept to the cover, everything about The Sisters Grimm was drawing me in.

However, this was a read I definitely struggled with. The multiple points of view were disorienting to start off since I didn’t understand what was happening and the world building was very disjointed and thus confusing. The characters were annoying and weren’t well developed or too basic. Quite frankly I started to hate Goldie quite quickly after meeting her.

After picking it up and putting it down several times over the last few months I’ve decided that this book isn’t for me and I don’t intend to pick it up to finish it.

I read about a quarter of the way through.

The Sister's Grimm is a powerful exploration of the power women hold, and how men try to rip it all way, told through the story of four girls with magical powers who must reclaim their identities and learn their magic in time for their eighteenth birthday.
All four girls were awesome characters. Liyana was definitely my favourite. Goldie was loving and determined, Bea was cold but intelligent and stubborn. Scarlett was fierce and committed, and Liyana was creative and calm.
I really love the idea of this book, and I was so very intrigued to read it. The idea of female magic really drew me in. However, as I read I got more and more confused. Some of my questions were answered but even after finishing the book, I still don't completely understand some of the concepts. I enjoyed the plot but there were some things that really lost me. The whole concept of the Sisters Grimm being sisters and having magic and how they were related to their "father" and the fallen warrior stars just confused the heck out of me. I could follow the plot and still really liked it, but there were some things that I totally didn't get that definitely affected my enjoyment.
The writing was really beautiful and lyrical, it read like literature fiction. It was really atmospheric and unique, and gave the book such a magical touch and sense of hope and wonder. The imagery was so vivid, and I easily got immersed in the colourful and beautiful world. Everwhere especially felt so real to me and was described so damn beautifully.
This book gives you the sense that maybe you are magical, yourself, but don't know it. Especially if you're under eighteen, you could be a Sisters Grimm. Honestly, I totally hope I am. For all of us always hoping we'd get magical powers, who when we were young squinted at flowers trying to get them to grow, or convinced ourselves we'd made something move, this book is for us.
I loved how feminist this book is - obviously I did - it seems to be a metaphor for the power women hold, our silent magic. Though in this book it's actual magic, controlling the elements and such, it infers that we as women have a certain power ourselves. And that men won't accept that, that they'll try to own us and pit us against each other, using out magic for their own gain or extinguishing it altogether.
The Sisters Grimm blends fairytales and magic with the harsh realities of our world with a stunning result. I'd recommend this book to fans of The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Night Circus.

This is the first book I’ve read by this author and wow what an introduction to a fabulous and creative writer.
The story is about 4 sisters born on the exact same day tied to the elements, fire, water, air and earth. They don’t know they are sisters but have to find each other by their 18th birthdays.
The story flips between each girl, their lives, memories and real dreams, so the reader learns more and more about each sister.
I found myself rooting for each sister for different reasons and at different times, knowing that one must die and wondering all the way through which sister that would be.
My favourite sister was Goldie, I loved the relationship between her and Leo, although they were all very likeable and equally dislikable at times.
I absolutely loved how the story unfolded and how their soldiers were revealed which I didn’t see coming.
Ultimately this is a story of dark versus light and what the sisters will choose when face to face with their demon father in an epic finale.
I’d recommend reading this book, it builds slowly and reveals as it goes along, surprising me often. I often find book endings disappointing but this book does not disappoint and for me gave a satisfying ending..

First time when I heard about this book I thought this will be my 5 stars read. Unfortunately I was so wrong. I'm a big fan of fantasy and retellings and The sisters Grimm has both. Even if I don't like multiple narrations, I gave the story a chance because of the plot.

The beginning was captivating. I started falling in love with the characters, especially with Goldie and Liyana, and I was so excited to find out more about Everwhere.

Maybe because of the curiosity I finished the book or maybe because I don't like to dnf so easily. But it took me too much time to read it and at the half of the book I was so bored that I started counting the pages.

I don't know if it's because I read it in kindle format, but the story was so confusing that even the author forgot who should narrate. At some point it was hard for me to track the events and all I wanted was to finish the book.

Thank you NetGalley for this eArc in exchange for an honest review.

3.5

I had very high expectations for this book and for about the first 15o pages or so, it met them, but after that it went downhill. I expected this to be a 4 or 5 star read and it would've been if the book were maybe 200 pages shorter. After the first 150 pages it started dragging on and it was super slow paced till the very end and that made me not wanna read it anymore but i pushed through because i was curious and wanted to know how it would end. As for the end (without spoiling anything) i expected something amazing and what i got was pretty anticlimactic. But maybe that's just me, maybe i just lost all excitement and had none left for the end of the story. I also wanna add that i loved the writing a lot, it was very lyrical (which is something i enjoy) but i didn't like the sudden switching of POVs. I felt like that took me out of the story and it was hard to get attached to any of the characters since i would spend no more than a couple of pages with each one. This also made it hard in the beginning for me to remember who was who, since the story kept jumping from one girl to the other. Even though this review sounds a bit negative, i can't say that i didn't enjoy the story, it's very unique and like nothing i've read before and i really loved the beginning so that's why i'm giving it 3.5 stars. If you think you will like this and if you don't mind slow paced books and lyrical/descriptive writing, the definitely give this a go.

TW: abuse, sexual assault, self harm, death of a loved one

Thank you to Net Galley for my review copy.
3.6 stars
The Sisters Grimm follows 5 different characters in the days leading up to a final battle between the forces of Good and Evil. The four sisters all have elemental powers, something they knew and practised as children but then forgot as teenagers. They must find each other and access their full power once more before their eighteenth birthday or they will die in the place they call Everwhere - either at the hands of a soldier - the fifth perspective in the book - or at the hands of their demonic father.

There's a lot I enjoyed about the book. I have always loved the idea of elemental magic, sisterhood and otherworldly places reached by magical doors. The four sisters were diverse and interesting, and the writer's construction of the characters and their normal, human lives with its attendant turmoils strengthened the plot overall. It's a book that really celebrates girl power and sisterhood. Within the book, we get retellings of fairytales that are more empowering and focuses on more modern ideas like freedom and being true to yourself rather than ideas to do with obedience, goodness or beauty. All the ideas in the books were great: a magical war; a secretive, mystical place that can only be reached in your dreams or at 3.33 am through particular gateways, an enemy-to-lovers plotline; fallen stars as angels; a patriarchal father-figure who controls rather than loves, a grandmother with Alzheimer's; a girl who falls into poverty; a girl struggling to look after her younger brother etc etc. The ideas were imaginative and would have been so enjoyable to read about had they been executed well.
I think that's the only failing of the book, great ideas that are written about in a mediocre fashion when they could have been more. We get snippets of all five characters' lives but often very short snippets so we're flung from character to character at a rapid pace, giving the reader a bit of whiplash. The writing gets overly sentimental and inwards at times making the moments feel more contrived - lots of telling of the emotions, rather than showing. The girl power aspect of the novel becomes juvenile and over-the-top because of the writing. This book would work so well as a movie because the plot and the characters all shine but there was just too much exposition when it wasn't needed and interior monologuing when it wasn't needed. I think that if the writer had held back a bit, trimmed down a bit, this book could have been a powerhouse. I definitely think readers within the 15 to 21 age bracket would enjoy this but the writing itself was a bit juvenile for my taste. I nearly gave up on the book about 20% in but I'm glad now that I kept on. One final note -why was a seventeen-year-old at university? Nowhere are we told that she skipped a year or anything like that - I know it seems like a minor plot hole but I genuinely spent time pondering that.
Overall, worth a read for plot and characters but I think this book would work best for YA readers.

I really like Menna van Praag's writing and books about girls growing into their powers, especially fairy tale inspired, but I just couldn't click with The Sisters Grimm. The narrative is too disjointed, switching back and forth between characters, voices, timelines and even between first, second and third person, usually within the space of a couple of pages, sometimes only within the space of a couple of paragraphs. I admit that this probably wasn't helped by the formatting of the E-ARC, which really minimised the breaks so they were easy to miss, but it made it very hard for me to connect with the characters and their stories, as every time you get invested in something, you get whisked away immediately. It's dreamlike, and it's certainly beautiful, but at the expense of the reader's connection.

Other reviewers are also right that this needed content warnings for sexual assault of minors. Come on publishers, do better at protecting your readers, please.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for my ARC.

Unfortunately, although I wanted to, I did not fall in love with this book; I should have as it has: strong female protagonists, fantasy elements, great descriptive writing and detail. It also transferred the POV between all five of the main characters and moved between the past and present with great skill.

While not for me, this title will indubitably gather its own following of fans eager to read the next instalment, hopefully all future readers will belong in this group.

3 1/2 stars because of the book’s’ excellence, even though it wasn’t to my taste.

I totally forgot about this. So I'm going to make this short.

This is one of my best reads last year and it made me happier because it's an ARC. The fantasy element is really done well and I found myself sucked into the world of these four sisters and their forgotten childhood. I think this is a very atmospheric novel and I really like the concept of the sisters, with their father wanting to use them for evil but in the end, something amazing happened instead. That said, I love how the story is wrapped up. Too powerful.

The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars is that I found the first half of the story, with the sisters telling their experiences, somehow similar to each other. Maybe because they're heading towards the same directions in life but still it made the story a little slow. But overall, I highly recommend this novel. If you want to read a story that is entertaining, magical and original, this one is for you.

I have tried very hard with this book. I’ve been reading it for weeks, and I just can’t seem to get into it. It doesn’t seem to be to do with the writing, I like the style and the voice. It’s not to do with the setting, although I was surprised to find it was a contemporary fantasy rather than a period or alternate world fantasy. I like contemporary fantasy, and I like the fact that there’s a cast of girls with a variety of personalities and powers. It’s like a levelled up version of the T*witches series I loved as a kid – sisters whose powers are at their height together, who complement each other and form a whole. But for some reason I’ve been reading this for nearly a month now and it doesn’t seem to be flowing for me. There’s definitely a chance that part of this might be to do with my general energy levels, but I also think I’m not entirely suited to the structure of the narrative.

I’ve spoken before on here about how I am not really suited to short stories, because I prefer to follow a narrative from end-to-end, and unfortunately the structure of this book seems to mirror short stories more than a traditional novel. Each of the characters – the four sisters, and Leo, plus a general overview of Everwhere – get their own narratives. The storyline jumps from person-to-person after fairly short sections, and then between different timelines as well. One of the narratives is in first person, the Everwhere narrative is in second person, and all the rest are in third person. It’s hard to settle into, and it means by halfway through the book I still didn’t feel like I fully knew the characters or plot.

I also haven’t been entirely sold on Goldie and Leo’s side plot and relationship. I get that because of their powers they’re supposed to be drawn to each other, and Leo is trying to use Goldie while resisting his own attraction to her, but the speed at which it happens – over the course of a couple of weeks – seems improbable. Coupled with the very short, choppy narrative segments, it feels like there’s barely any development of it at all before the inexplicable tension is busy being resolved. I didn’t get a chance to really feel the chemistry, and to be honest I still don’t. The six-way split means that I didn’t feel like I know any of them, and I struggled to feel invested.

I think if you’re looking for a YA urban fantasy with a strong cast of female leads, then you might enjoy this. It plays with narrative structures and timelines, and also explores a really interesting magic style. There are also some wonderful nods to the stories of the Brothers Grimm, changing them and twisting them to fit in with the new story and make them fresh and sinister in a brand new way. Theoretically I should love all this, I adore fairy tales and adaptations of them. The presence of a sinister storytelling father figure, controlling these characters like puppets, reminds me so much of Princess Tutu, one of my favourite anime series. Everything in this book should have ticked every one of my boxes – slight insta-love aside – but it just didn’t. Which perhaps go to show that structure is as important as content and narrative style in putting together a book.

There are some trigger warnings to be aware of in this book. As far as I got, there are references to child abuse, including child sexual abuse, adult sexual assault, violence, and also animal death. I’ve no doubt this develops as the book continues. Theoretically these are all themes present in the Grimm tales, but there’s something different about reading them in a slightly sanitised and detached fairy tale, and reading them in a novel which is designed to evoke emotion and goes into a little more detail.

It’s likely that I’ll come back to this book eventually, I am curious to see how it ends, and I am disappointed that I didn’t love it. But it’s taking me so long to read that I’ve stopped enjoying it now and that’s not a recipe for a happy me or particularly fair to the book. The stars just didn’t align for me and this book on this occasion.

Briefly:

A contemporary urban fantasy with a rich mythology based around the fairytales collected by the Brothers Grimm, a diverse cast of female characters, and high stakes.

It plays with time periods, POVs and narrative structure, but unfortunately this meant that I struggled to settle into the story and couldn’t connect with the characters. Structurally, it just didn’t work for me.

There are some definite issues in terms of child abuse and sexual assault, and I’m uncomfortable with some of the themes of incest which are sort of subtly there but it’s unclear what is meant by ‘father’ when referring to… well, their father. Is he actually their biological father, or is he just father in the sense of the creator? I expect I’d find out if I stuck with it, but it just wan’t happening.

Rating: 2/5 – on paper, this book ticks a lot of my boxes, and it isn’t a bad book. These ratings really reflect my personal experience of the book rather than being any statement on quality, and I do think that a lot of people are going to get on with it even thought I couldn’t.

3 of 5 stars
https://lynns-books.com/2020/02/13/the-sisters-grimm-by-menna-van-praag/
The Sisters Grimm is a difficult book for me to review. There are aspects to this story that are so good and coupled with the excellent writing and bringing together of fairytale characters I really did expect this to blow me away, and yet I’ve come away from this with mixed feelings.

This is a story of four young women, told in alternating pov chapters and with each chapter ominously counting down the days. The four of them share many similarities – they’re all struggling to stay afloat financially and need to make tough decisions, they all have something magical within them that they know little about and they’ve all met before, in a sort of dream landscape called Everwhere – a place where they honed their magic and became friends, There is also a fifth character, a soldier named Leo.

The premise of the book centres around the original dark fairy tales and the content is quite shockingly blunt in places. The four girls are Bea (Beauty), Goldie, Scarlet and Liyana. When they were much younger they met in Everwhere but after reaching the age of 13 they were no longer able to enter this dreamscape. When their 18th birthday takes place they will once again be admitted through the gates to Everwhere where they will make a tough decision that could cost them quite dearly. All the girls share the same birthday and the same father. Grimm, is a demon who is intent on causing chaos in the world and he gives all his daughters the chance to join him. If they fail to make the choice to turn to evil then they will be killed by his army of soldiers.

What I really liked about this was the writing. I really enjoyed reading the four different storylines and finding out more about the girl’s and their pasts as the novel progressed and in fact these stories were beautifully told. I also really liked the way magic was easily worked into the girl’s everyday lives. They all have different capabilities and sometimes can make strange things occur. There were also extra little touches such as the girls quite often almost meeting or being on a very close course with their lives almost intertwining without their knowledge.

Goldie was probably my least favourite character, I’m not sure why but I found myself not enjoying either her or Leo’s story. Scarlet’s chapters were very intriguing and in fact I found myself wishing for more and similarly with Liyana. Bea is the odd one out of the bunch, she is quite abrasive and aggressive. All of them have suffered through different childhood experiences and this speaks to their behaviour here.

In terms of criticisms. Well, I’m finding it difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is that didn’t quite work for me here. There is a definite feeling of bloating to parts of the story and a bit of repetition – but not enough to irritate me. I found myself very perplexed about the underlying story of Grimm and his daughters and soldiers, I also didn’t really understand why the girls were forbidden entry to Everwhere when they reached the age of 13 – it seemed contrived somehow. I think I would have preferred them to simply forget the place as they grew older. I think my main issue is that for the most part this has a contemporary feel with everyday modern issues, and, I enjoyed that part of the story very much I just found it difficult to accept the Everwher chapters. They didn’t sit right for me somehow. Plus the ending was definitely a little rushed and in some respects disappointing – but I don’t want to give away spoilers.

To be fair, I can see that the author obviously wanted to write a book about sisterhood, about sticking together and helping each other when in need and I do think she succeeded in that respect, but, I just didn’t feel like the two different elements of the story sat well together, and I had far too many questions that remain unanswered.

I would also mention a quick trigger warning here, sexual abuse and self harming spring immediately to mind for example.

On the whole this wasn’t a bad read and I don’t want to appear overly negative or to put others off picking it up. It just didn’t quite work as well as I’d hoped.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

My rating 3 out of 5 stars

Content warning: Child abuse, attempted sexual assault

Those content warnings - I needed them. But we’ll get into that. 

This book follows the story of these four girls, and for the most part, the stories are totally distinct. There are some flashback moments where we see them together as children but other than that I’d say 80% of this book is following four separate narratives. It quickly becomes clear that not one of these women is having a good time in life, from financial troubles to affairs of the heart pretty much nothing is good for them. That basically sets the tone for the whole book, pretty much nothing good happens to the girls for the entirety of this story. I’m exaggerating a little but, thinking about it, when they are happy you as a reader have the background knowledge to know that it isn’t going to last long, that there are things they don’t know or don’t remember that are going to make that happiness into something even more painful at some point. That essentially leads to a pretty brutal read - as you might imagine. 

I know some people ‘enjoy’ (perhaps ‘find rewarding’ is a better word) a more brutal story, so take this rather negative review as a matter of personal opinion (for the most part). But I really cannot take this kind of relentless narrative, I need those (genuine) high points or I just feel like I want to put the book down. This was particularly evident when I got towards the end of the book. The ending ought to have been a big cathartic moment, setting things on the right path, but it ended up feeling hugely rushed so it fell pretty flat for me. I don’t know if it was that there was too much to cram into this story (it’s four full storylines after all) but something was off about this book. 

The one thing I don’t think was a matter of personal preference was the frustration I felt at the lack of content warnings in this book. Right at the start of the book, we have one of the characters being groped by her boss (red flag) and from there, things escalated into multiple mentions of the abuse of one of the characters as a child. I’m not saying those things have no place in fiction but if I had been given knowledge of them before requesting the book I think I would have either not read the book or gone in with a different sense of what to expect. This feels like a constant battle at the moment and I just feel like publishers (for it is the publisher who is at fault here not the author) aren’t listening to anyone!

Frustration. 

I ended up giving this book a two-star rating because I did like some elements of the story, I liked the inclusion of queer characters and some of the setting ideas were interesting, I just felt that overall this book wasn’t for me and that the execution of the ideas wasn’t as polished as I might have hoped. 

My rating 2 / 5 stars

I received a free digital copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own. 

The Sisters Grimm is out now

For The Sisters Grimm I was very excited. However once I started reading this quickly dissipated.
This book focuses on about 5 characters. One guy and 4 girls. One pov is written in first person point of view, and the others are written in third person point of view. These kind of switches are hard to do right and there needs to be a good reason to write it like this. Why was this one girl special that she deserved first person point of view? I could have read through with that.

However, this first person point of view was immediately also joined in the chapter with the third person point of view of the guy which I found very jarring. The other three girls all go one chapter to themselves and then the chapters started swapping between all the point of views with little scenes. There was never a moment where I felt I was getting the time to get to know the characters.

When a flashback was added I decided that this was enough for me and this was just not going to be a book for me.

4.5 Stars

So this was a super, super weird read but - for me at least - weird in a good way.

The Sisters Grimm is very much a marmite book, and in the beginning when I felt a bit distanced from the narrative I worried I'd end up hating it. Fortunately, I never stopped being intrigued by the story, and I really liked the writing style, so I flew through this rather long book. Every POV was interesting, and I think in the end my favourite sister was Liyanna - but I kept switching throughout!

If I have one complaint, it's that I wish Goldie's "poorness" had been done better. She never felt poor to me - not least because her brother goes to an £8k a year private school, and no - not on a scholarship. I was convinced her family must have been rich at some point for Teddy to be going to St Faith's in the first place, but I don't think that was ever meant to be the case. It seems a weird narrative choice when Cambridge is such an expensive place to live anyway - if he had been there on a fully-paid scholarship and the issue had been expensive trips and the like on top of rent I would have bought it, but as it was it bugged me whenever Goldie was called "poor" from that moment on. I think it would have helped if there had been more of a description of where she lived, too, because surely she didn't live in the town centre? I was kind of hoping for a reference to Arbury or Chesterton (MY Cambridge, lol) on anywhere that wasn't central really, and definitely more town vs. gown discussions. I love Leigh Bardugo for delving into this in her university-based novel Ninth House, which is set in New Haven, home of Yale University - one day I hope to see this in a Cambridge based novel too. We get a little here (the homeless people in the street juxtaposed with the colleges was a really good image) but we stick too much to tourist-y university locations to get a real, nuanced feel of the city. This would be fine if the issue of class and money weren't brought up so often, but I feel like it was an opportunity lost.

But yeah, in spite of that really long rant-y paragraph, I only took off half a star for it. This novel was great, super unique, and of course I loved all the library scenes (especially since I mostly read this book at the very library where Bea was studying!). It was dark in that morbidly fascinating way where you can't peel your eyes from the page. Some people will hate it, as is the case with all weird books, but to be honest, I rather loved it. Apparently there will be sequels, and I'm super intrigued as to where the story will be taken next.

Four sisters together, then apart and forgotten. Will they find themselves and each other again before having to face their father and the soldiers?
A fallen star, Leo has been raised his whole life knowing he was created to kill Grimm girls. And it's the only way for him and his soldier brothers to survive. Can anything change his mind?
There's a beautiful storytelling quality to parts of the book. I really enjoyed the style of writing, but there were a few parts that I found a bit confusing. Also there are a lot of characters and it took me a while to remember who everyone was with all the jumping around. Otherwise, the book kept me hooked and the ending left me with so many feelings and emotions!

A demon who desired earthly domination fathered an army of dark daughters to help him corrupt humanity...
As the children grew up, they all dreamed of a strange otherworld, which consisted of falling leaves, mists and fog. Here in Everywhere, the four girls all half-sisters, connected by blood and magic, begin to nurture their elemental powers together. Then at 13, the sisters were ripped from Everywhere and separated, and now five years on they are searching for one another while they are yarning to discover their supernatural powers.

Everywhere can only be accessed at 3:33 am on the night of the new moon , and the sisters must prepare for a battle that lies ahead. On their eighteenth birthday, they will have to fight their farther’s soldiers. If they survive, they will face their farther who will let them live only if the sisters turn dark. They have 33 days to discover what they truly are.....

This is a wonderful magical book and beautifully written. I loved all of the little stories in each of the sisters and the the little things that kept bringing them all together.
The countdown to the 33 days was excellent and so engaging! I was totally hooked from the first page and could not put the book down.

There is something truly magical about this book, it’s enchanting, empowering and a beautiful fairytale. I would wholeheartedly recommend this book and enjoyed every minute.

My thanks to Random House U.K. Transworld Publishers/Bantam Press for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Sisters Grimm’ by Menna van Praag in exchange for an honest review.

Although she’s written a number of titles marketed as Women’s Fiction with elements of magical realism based in Cambridge, this is van Praag’s first work of dark fantasy. Its main setting is also Cambridge.

“There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of sisters Grimm on Earth.... This is the story of four sisters Grimm – daughters born to different mothers on the same day, each born out of bright-white wishing and black-edged desire.”

The plot is complex and involves the demon father of the Grimm sisters creating a dimension, named Everwhere, that the sisters first enter while dreaming at the age of eight. There they discover each other and their magical powers. When they turn thirteen they are no longer able to journey there and forget each other and the powers they once had.

Things shift again when they come of age and on their eighteenth birthdays they will be able to return physically to Everwhere through special gates at a specific time and moon phase. Yet they are not aware of what will await them that night. They will have to fight for their lives against soldiers sent by their father to determine who among them is the most worthy of becoming his favourite.

It’s a pretty dark scenario and I wondered what benefit this drastic culling has for Demon Daddy.
Still knowing he is a demon is a pretty good indication that no matter how lyrical and beautiful the realm of Everwhere appears to be what awaits them, even if they survive their coming of age, isn’t likely to be life-affirming.

The narrative focuses on a 33-day countdown to their October 31 birthdays. The sisters begin to awaken to their destinies and reconnecting with each other. The novel moves between the viewpoints of the sisters both in the present and their younger selves. Another voice is that of Leo, one of the soldiers, who is focusing in on his assigned prey in the real world.

Each of the sisters is attributed to a different element (earth, fire, water, and air) and is loosely based on a fairy tale character. This is reflected in their names, backgrounds, shared stories, and a series of delicate illustrations that in the novel are created by one of the sisters, who is a gifted artist. These were actually created by Cambridge artist, Alastair Meikle.

While its lead characters are in their teens, ‘The Sisters Grimm’ has a dark plot and contains violence and mature themes. It’s a novel where warnings for content should be noted if they are likely to be triggering. These include sexual assault, self-harm, child abuse, incest, suicidal thoughts and the like.

In addition, some characters use explicit language though this was more evident in early chapters. I am hardly one to be overly delicate on this issue but it was at times jarring alongside the novel’s more elegant prose. To be fair its author and publisher are not listing this as a ‘Teen/YA’ title but it may find itself shelved as such in some instances.

I did a close reading of ‘The Sisters Grimm’ as part of a group read with members of The Pigeonhole. While I did find that I had a few quibbles with some aspects of the plot and characterisations, such as more than one case of ‘insta-love’, those concerns decreased as I continued reading and became caught up in the sisters’ stories.

Menna van Praag writes very lyrically and her descriptions of Cambridge and Everwhere brought them vividly to life. Although the jumping about between characters was at times dizzying, I didn’t find it particularly confusing once I got into the rhythm.

I came to care very much about three of the sisters. The fourth not so much; even understanding the factors that shaped her I found her attitudes and violence towards animals went too far for me. Still, being the daughter of a demon and a full-blood Grimm girl, who had survived her own coming-of-age, meant that both nature and nurture was stacked against her.

Overall, I felt that Menna van Praag wrote beautifully and wove into her narrative some very original ideas about fairytales. I was pleased that one of the sisters was an African immigrant and that the author didn’t shy away from exploring her experience of racism as well as weaving in aspects of Ghanaian culture. I also enjoyed this same sister’s use of the Tarot and how she wasn’t an instant expert but struggled with the interpretations. It felt authentic.

So yes I had a few quibbles though I am glad that I didn’t let these overshadow my enjoyment. Certainly I felt that van Praag brought the various plot threads together for a powerful and very satisfying conclusion.

Although I understand that there is a sequel in the works, ‘The Sisters Grimm’ is complete in itself. I have already obtained one of her earlier novels as I am a fan of magical realism and look forward to her future projects.

This book should come with major trigger warnings for trauma/content. It contains: child abuse, sexual abuse, self-harm, depression, suicidal thoughts, incest, injury, dementia, loss, fat-shaming, slut-shaming, racism – yes that’s a lot and I’ve probably missed some.

Please head over to my blog to read my full review: https://geeking-by.net/the-sisters-grimm-review/

As a lover of dark fairy tales, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the word Grimm was not the first thing that grabbed my attention. I’m also a fan of the TV show Grimm so I was curious to see another work of fiction that seemed to be using the term as an identifier. Did these Sisters Grimm have anything in common with the Grimms from the show? Were they monster hunters too? Or was there something else happening here? I had no idea but I wanted to find out!

My feelings towards this book were quite ambiguous throughout; I didn’t dislike it, but I didn’t love it either. I continued reading eagerly to know what was going to happen, to follow the trail and find out how the mystery ended. However, at about 60% I began to realise that it was going to take a monumental showdown, and a massive twist at the conclusion to redeem the book in my eyes – and The Sisters Grimm failed to do that.

There were a few clever twists at the end that I didn’t see coming but overall it ended as I expected and that is not a good sign for me. I like to be surprised, I like to be shocked and have my heart torn from my chest, thrown to the ground and stomped all over. I don’t like reading a book that makes me roll my eyes and sigh at yet more trauma, more drama being thrown at the poor characters once again.

As the book went on I found it increasingly difficult to connect with it. The characters themselves were flimsy, based on and named after fairy tales in a way that reminded me of my time as a role player. They all have a Mary-Sue quality to them; the naive blue-eyed golden-haired girl, the fiery redhead, the token immigrant and the promiscuous Latino. The inconsistencies did not just stop with the weak characters either; it dips and dives between first/second person and past and presence tense, and the timelines are all over the place, darting from the present to the past without warning with multiple authors (7 at my counting).

The Sisters Grimm is the author’s first foray into fantasy, however, I would argue heavily against classing this as a fantasy novel. For me, it is magical realism rather than fantasy or urban fantasy. It's also being put forward as a fantasy novel by the publishers and it’s is the first book in a trilogy which is honestly baffling to me. While I have many issues with the book the ending wasn’t one of them; there were no loose ends, everything was wrapped up and it reads like a perfect stand-alone novel.

Trauma was the biggest theme of this book, which is why I’ve ended up devoting an entire sub-section of the review to the topic. It was quite troublesome to find so much trauma in this book because a) it’s supposed to be a fantasy novel and b) you’re someone with PTSD and mental health conditions. While I’m no stranger to fantasy novels including forms of trauma – after all you’d need to be living under a rock not to at least be familiar with the violence and trauma present in Game of Thrones series – I don’t expect it to be at the forefront of the novel. Fantasy to me is about the theme of fantasy, the world-building, the magic, and anything else is character development. Take all that away and you’ve just got contemporary fiction, possibly chick lit. Either way; not fantasy and certainly not something I would have read if it hadn’t come attached with the fantasy label.

This was a book of missed opportunities and contained content that left me feeling a bit uncomfortable. It tells the inter-linked stories of Goldie, Bea, Scarlett and Liyana - the eponymous Grimm sisters - as they approach their 18th birthday and prepare to fight their father in a battle for Everwhere.

The Positives: The basic premise here is fascinating and really intrigued me from the start. The prose is lyrical and has a real fairy-tale feeling about it, which was great.

The Negatives: The premise was completely wasted for me. Instead of a book about sisters preparing for a battle against evil, 90% of this book follows the day to day of each girl as she navigates her life. I felt that the characters read much older than their age (17) and the interactions they had with men left me very uncomfortable, bearing in mind that there are sexual encounters with much older men. These encounters were never challenged, which just felt wrong to me. Also, there is a suggestion of incest - again, never challenged.

Overall I just really didn't connect to this story at all.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

DNF - unfortunately I wasn't gripped by this book with the first quarter. There was a lot of POV switches with differing 1st/2nd/3rd person that made it difficult to keep on track with everything that was happening.