The Sisters Grimm by Menna Van Prag is a fairytale retelling that follows four girls with magic that will need to fight men to survive. I honestly don't think I'm explaining this right, but that probably shows how confused I was. I'm not going to lie, the story had potential, I just feel like if it's being hyped too much and, for me, the book is not living up to the hype. I had a hard time connecting to the characters and there was a lot going on with the world building. Overall this book is not for me. I'm giving it 2 stars because the story idea was a good one, I just wished I had liked it more.


Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to review.

I am afraid that I just couldn't get in to this book. I read a few chapters but found I just couldn't make sense of it. Consequently I gave up. Not a book for me.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. It has a lot going for it including great world building and four vibrant young woman just starting to recognise their own strengths. I enjoyed the writer's imagination and in places the story is beautiful. However, the timelines were often difficult to follow with the background fragmented and repetitive such that the pacing was too slow for most of the book with the ending very rushed when more detail would have been good.

This is story of four women who first meet as children in their dreams in a fantasy world called Everwhere from which they are excluded when they turn thirteen. They learn that they are Grimm sisters and on the night they turn eighteen they will be permitted to re-enter this world but must fight male soldiers for their lives. Each of the women has a special magical gift using the power of Earth, Fire, Water or Air, which they must learn to develop to to use in their fight to survive in Everwhere.

I was enchanted by the premise of the book and the stories of the four women and I enjoyed the women's stories and the empowerment they each found within themselves. However the timelines were confusing with each of the women narrating events from their childhood as well as the current time so that it wasn't always clear what time period we were in (adding indicators such as 'then' and 'now' would have been helpful). So while I really enjoyed the mythology of the novel and the writer's vision for her fantasy world and it's inhabitants, the novel really would have benefited from more focus and streamlining of the plot.

The Sisters Grimm

This book was received from the Author, and Publisher, in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own

The Sisters Grimm, is the first fantasy novel by Menna van Praag,
A lovely darkish magical realism tale!

The Sisters Grimm, by Menna van Praag, Is beautifully written with lyrical prose and that pulls you in deeply within its immersive pages. This book is both incredible and captivating in its rich detailed, atmospheric world building.

Menna van Praag, delivers well a enchanting storyline, along with the perfect urban amount of magical realism. Some books come into your life and leave a lasting impression. This is one of the rare finds for me.

Menna van Praag book is delicious darkish fantasy of four Sisters with magical capabilities. Goldie, Liyana, Scarlet, and Bea. All four posses very distinct different aspects of elemental magic.

The Sisters Grimm, daughters born to different mothers on the same day, each with their own distinct elemental magic. Light and dark
They found each other at eight years old. Separated again at thirteen, it’s imperative that they find each other now that they are nearing a day of reckoning with their eighteen fast approaching. They will make the choice between light and dark, between good and evil in the mystical land of Everwhere. Yet they don’t remember that this is their mission. The sisters must return to the land of their childhood dreams. Everwhere can only be accessed through certain gates at the time of 3:33 A.M. on the night of a new moon. The gradually the return of their memories and dreams pull them together as they realize the choice they will eventually have to make.
The Sisters only have thirty three days to try and discover who they are and their magical capabilities.

Menna van Praag’s stunning ability to meticulously weave multiple POV’s and timelines.
A intriguing well developed plot line that is compelling and multi layered.
This is a spellbinding tale about the strength of women, and the power of unity.
A brilliant execution, of a storyline weaved intricately within an epic fantasy world. Ultimately a breathtaking book on female empowerment, and the importance of discovering ones own inter most magic.
A captivating storyline within an urban fantasy mystical realism
The book is creative with diverse fleshed complex characters. I personally enjoyed the author’s focus on the strength and bonds of the women in the novel
Wonderful lyrical prose with seamless writing, with multiple POV’s.
A great spellbinding and vibrant fantasy rewarding read,

Atmospheric, riveting and intensely entertaining, I recommend this book for anyone who enjoys reading richly textured epic fantasy books. This book delivers the perfect amount of dark emmental fantasy, that immersives the reader within its pages. From start to finish I was sucked into it’s pages.

This is one of those books that you just have to read to know what feeling I’m getting at. It sucks you in and keeps you hungry for more. It’s a unique and unforgettable storyline that is solid. Cleverly told through a brilliant narration.
I highly recommend this book to my family and friends !

I Thoroughly enjoyed this book!

The world created by the author was up there with one of my other works of YA fiction, the daughter of smoke and bone. I would say I enjoyed this book just as much !

The book is written from the P.OV of five characters, each one with their own distinct voice. My favourite was definitely Scarlet! I loved how the author interwove Grimm fairy tales into the story, and also how the story moved flawlessly from past to present.

A wonderful piece of Y.A Fiction!

--DISCLAIMER: I received an eARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.--
This book had an incredibly unique concept and gave new life to the fairy-tales of the Brothers Grimm. Sadly, it was at times lacking in execution, and lost its momentum in tangents, posing more questions than it answered and leaving many strands unraveled. It is the story of four girls told in fragments, and two timelines - I read this as an eARC, so I'm not sure quite how fast the viewpoints change on paper, but I would estimate once every couple of pages on average. Therefore, it will likely confuse many readers, and take quite a bit of time to get into for most people. This is not something I mind too much, but in this case, it led to a loss of urgency.
Every time it felt like one of the girls was heading towards growth or confrontation, the PoV switched, and by the time it returned, the situation had changed. This also meant that it was hard to empathize with them, and choices that were made/things that were revealed towards the end had me scratching my head, as it felt rather clichéd. Nevertheless, it was a very well-paced read that kept one glued to the page and provided a great and unique concept. It is worth picking up and making up your mind about yourself.

First thing’s first, some Content Warnings: child abuse, sexual assault, rape, self harm, abusive relationships.

I loved the idea for this book! A dark, twisty fantasy with magic?! Yes please.

I loved the feminist message of sisterhood and friendship, and the POC and LGBTQIA+ representation. Throughout the book, each girls’ powers are hinted at and are shown to have caused and shaped certain events in their lives which was an interesting way to bring Everywhere into the real world.

I enjoyed that each girl had their own element which reflected their personality, which were different enough to stand out, but they share a fierce independence and determination. The girls all face troubles in their real world life and come from all walks of life, showing that despite being set in only two cities, no two people have the same experiences.

Each girl had a POV in the present and one in the past, plus another character’s past and present POVS, adding up to 10 separate storylines. This lead to a lot of confusion in the timelines, and I often had to re read sections to figure out whether they were set in the past or present. Due to the chapters being split into days, there weren’t any clear indicators of where the time jumps were happening. All of this lead to each storyline feeling quite jumpy and what should have been serious matters losing most of their impact due to being cut into small sections rather than one long piece of prose. I think the story would have flowed better if it was split into characters with past/present sections in each so each section melded and connected.

I found the constant repetition of the upcoming battle took away from the tension that the chapter titles counting down built up from the beginning. One problem with knowing what will happen at the end is that the mystery of what happens is largely lost. Due to this, the end scenes with the final battle seemed incredibly lacklustre, despite the fates of several characters. Even though these events were meant to be a turning point for the other characters, it felt flat rather than shocking or sad.

I had quite a large problem with the addition of the sexual assault, especially as a device to strengthen the character it happens to. I get very uncomfortable with the idea that women need to be violated and hurt physically and emotionally to become strong people and it is a completely overused trope. The self harm also seemed to come out of nowhere without much explanation for its inclusion which again, was quite uncomfortable to read.

Overall, I gave this book 3 stars. The writing was beautiful and I liked the overarching message, the representation and the girls’ characterisation. However, I felt that the structure of the plot ended up making the story less powerful and coherent and the assault felt unnecessary and could have been left out.

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was drawn to this story straight away from the blurb as I thought it sounded really intriguing. Plus, there is the small similarity to umbrella academy with siblings being born on the same day and having to come together for a higher purpose which I loved.

In this story we follow four sisters – Goldie, Bea, Liyana and Scarlet – who are each interesting and complex characters. They all have their own problems and difficulties which are expanded on in the book.
I liked how each of the sisters were connected to an element, I thought that was a really nice touch. Additionally, I enjoyed the representation throughout the book as it had characters of colour and characters in the LGBTQIA+ community.

The format of the book is very similar to One of Us is Lying with the multiple POV’s in one chapter. Unfortunately, I don’t get on with this format just because it makes things a little jumpy/confusing for me but other than that it is a good book. It has an interesting storyline, beautiful lyrical writing, a lot of mystery and intrigue and a good build up.

Nope! What started off as a interesting spin on a fairytale retelling quickly developed into an incoherent mess. It was trying to cram too much in:

Let's take some fairytale princesses...
and they live in modern day England...
but they're sassy and have kickass powers ...
oh let's give them .... ELEMENTAL POWERS!!!!
Oh and they're "sisters" too ...
but their dad is a demon ...
and some of their mothers may also be their sisters ... eww....
cause y'know, heroes need to be damaged.
The sisters use to hang out in a mystical secret garden ....
but when they reach a certain age they are banned from the garden, because REASONS ...
and then when they reach another age, they're allowed back in, but only to battle to the death ... because more REASONS ...
But before they battle each other they need to fight some guys ...
but not just any guys ...
oh wait... could these guys possibly be ...
the fairy-tale princes!!
Yes!
No!
Oh so, only some of them are ...
but these guys aren't normal guys ...
they're stars!!! FALLEN STARS!!!
And Fallen Stars need to feed on the life force of Grimm Sisters to survive...
oh but some of them do it for revenge... Grrr!! [flails fist at sky]
Oh and there is a countdown to fighting-to-the-death ...
but that won't make any sense without context ... sooo...
we need flashbacks!!!
Flashback for you. Flashback for you. Flashback for you. FLASHBACKS FOR EVERYONE!!
and ..... [takes a breath]

It was just too much. Who would have thought a story that had soooo much in it would be such a snoozefest.

Well, I'm glad this is over. I tried and tried and tried hoping I would start to enjoy the story the longer I read, and finally understand but nope. After 496 pages I mostly feel confused. Most of this world doesn't make any sense and worse, it's not even explained. I waited and waited and waited for explanations about how this universe works and all, but we just don't get them. Or we get them, but like, little tiny bits there and there, the rest? You have to understand by yourself. It is HARD to enjoy a book where you're so lost by the world within.

When I read the prologue I thought "oh this is going to be good" but it's the only time I thought that. I started feeling confused right at the beginning when in the first chapter we got Goldie's narration first, and it was a first person pov. Then Leo, and it was a third person pov. And the other sisters too a third person pov. Why the distinction for Goldie? To show she's special, the main character of the main characters? I mostly found it annoying.

Then every time one of the girls meets a guy around her age it's "omgs so handsome!!!" and, please. I had to read this speech at least three times in just the first few chapters I have a limit. The romance also??? didn't make sense??? It's the "she's a girl, he's guy, can I make this more obvious" and uuuuugh. Kisses happened at some point and I was "what lead to this??" Also I'm sorry but a 28 years old dude asking out a not yet 18 eighteen girl made me feel reaaally uncomfortable, like yikes. Please don't. And the "I'm going to seduce her so I can kill her better" I'm just????? Why did I have to read that. And then some chapters later "I can't remember a time I didn't love you" ok but dude 1) you met barely a month ago and 2) till a few days (weeks? the timeline confused me too) ago you wanted to kill her. Another point: how the loyalties of everybody just changed all the time in just a second for nothing? Please make up your mind.

I talked about the timeline which confused me because it was kind of weird. Each chapter was one day (so from time to time we'd have just a few lines from a pov before changing) and then between chapters we had some "ten years ago" that didn't make more sense. because it just raised more questions. Honestly it took me so much time to understand the rule of the going-to-Everwhere-from-8-to-13 and then forgetting everything till 18 when you had a choice to make but I'm still not 100% sure I got it right. So at 18 you go back to Everwhere where you have to choose between go dark or go light. Go dark, yeah for you you live, go light, oops your dad wants to kill you you probably won't survive. But why did the dad sent his soldiers to the girls BEFORE their choice? So there's only the most powerful? Also if the Grimm girls are his daughters and the soldiers his sons (who were previously stars??? It's a point I never completely understood) what's the point of sending each against the other? Also it's said the soldiers goes to Everwhere once every month to kill Grimm girls but how are there so many to kill? It's said so few survived the choosing at 18 and I'm just ?? this doesn"t make sense.

I would have so much prefered if the book focused on the girls and their powers and their relationship between each other rather than some romance and "oh no their life sucks boo hoo"

Trigger warnings (which would have been much appreciated at the beginning of the book) for sexual assault, self harm, incest, suicide thoughts, child abuse, and probably more I forgot.

Last thing that truly annoyed me. You don't need to tell me a character is fat every few lines. Like seriously. It's like his only personality trait was being fat with how much I read it....

I was very keen to get this book. Its cover is beautiful and with its connections to fairy tales and magic I was sure I would love it.
Turned out that I liked it, but it lacked a vital spark for me.
I did enjoy each character, but collecting and cataloguing information about them from the narrative was a slog. Their stories jump about in time and between all of them and there was no signposting of where in their particular timeline you had travelled to, so I was constantly trying to collate what I already knew to create some sort of order! The pacing was slow, with many repetitive scenes covering much of the background. I was tempted at least twice to abandon it. I kept going and towards the end it got very interesting...but then, sadly, I felt that the ending was incredibly rushed. Here was the moment we’d been counting down towards throughout the story, and suddenly it was all over.

There is some beautiful writing in here and the idea is fabulous. If you’re not the sort of person who likes to keep a strong grasp on who, what, where and when then the flow of this may suit you. Ultimately, I was left disappointed by this aspect and by the hurried ending. 2.5 * rounded up

My thanks go to the publishers and NetGalley for the advanced copy in return for an honest review.

DNF 20%

I got this book for 99p from kindle because I’ve seen it about a lot and thought the cover was stunning.

I just couldn’t get on with this book at all. It was confusing and so hard to follow; it might be partly because I’m reading it as an ebook so formatting could be an issue, but the character jumps can be jarring and then there is random time jumps that come out of nowhere and had me flipping back pages to see if I’d missed something.

I didn’t connect with the characters either; I honestly struggled to remember which was which because nothing particularly stood out for me about either of them. Goldie is perhaps my least favourite?? And the whole sexual assault storyline for her was just unnecessarily put in to make an obviously bad character more bad. And the romance between her and Leo is so obviously coming 🤦🏻‍♀️

Also can we talk about the fact that the character who is connected with fire is called Scarlett (or Red) and is linked to a character called Mr Wolfe.... let’s get some more imaginative names maybe?

As I got it as an ebook I will keep it on my kindle and maybe if I see some amazing reviews about it revisit it later on, but for now it’s a DNF.

This book tells the story of 4 'sisters'. They are all daughters of the same demon father, but have not seem each other since their 8th birthday.s

They have forgotten that they are sisters and that they are able to control the elements. Each sister is connected to an element and will need to remember this to defeat their father o their 18th birthday.

They will need to reconnect with each other and also figure out who in thier lives is there to help them and who is there to destroy them.

While this novel is about teens it isnt exclusively a teen book.

I forgot the ages of the girls as the situations they were in could apply to older women.

One was looking after her younger brother alone, one was constantly nagged by her mother, one was looking after her grandmother who had dementia and she ran the family business and the last lived with her frivolous aunt.

I enjoyed the book immensely and look forward to the next, if there is one.

The Sisters Grimm is the story of and for women. It’s a lyrical story about sisters and their interweaving relationships, and there was so much to love about it. It’s creative and imaginative, with a plethora of POC and LGBTQIA+ characters and retellings woven throughout a story that ultimately feels infused throughout with magic.

Unfortunately I just couldn’t really get into this the way that I wanted too. There are far too many points of view, meaning the reader never really deeply connects with any of them. The four main sisters all have a special affinity to a particular element, but the jumping between them at odd intervals meant I never really understood the magical system, and as a result the story often gets convoluted and messy. I would have appreciated less view points to help ground myself in the story.

In addition the pacing is incredibly slow. The chapters count down days with lots of background to cover, and at times it really felt like a slog to get through each day. Time stood still as we get some repetitive descriptions of what the sisters were doing, and it get quite old pretty quickly, leaving me bored in places. I felt like a lot of this could have been trimmed down.

There is a lot of potential here for a wonderful feminist take on fairytale, and the writing is lovely, but it lacks a solid structure and has way too many characters to keep me invested.

Unfortunately, this title really wasn’t for me. I don’t know if my expectations were all wrong, but this just didn’t have much going on. I’ve DNF’d after 100 pages of reading about the average everyday goings on of a few girls. The closest we came to excitement was one of them dropping a light onto someone’s head.

There’s clearly a hint of something happening soon, but after thinking that for 100 pages, I can’t keep waiting forever for it to happen.

A sad DNF from me.

Well as soon as I saw the word Grimm I was in! I love fairytales and retellings and this book has a wonderfully subtle spin on various tales threaded through it's own unique plot.

The POV switches rapidly between Goldie in first person and her sisters and Leo in third person, whilst descriptions of Everwhere are told in second person.
That sounds confusing I know but actually it works rather well. I felt the choice of Goldie in first, aswell as beginning the book with her, singles her out as the main character, although Bea, Liyana and Scarlet share the plot equally.

Having Everwhere written in second person increased the dreamlike quality of its description and gave it a personality of it's own; a separate narrator talking directly to the reader.
The timeline alternates between adulthood and childhood for all five characters, giving us their backstory and previous connections to eachother.

Each sister has a romantic connection, I favoured the spin on Beauty and the Beast with character Vali but wasn't a fan of Ezekiel Wolf- I much preferred the relationship between Scarlet and her grandmother.

There are strong themes of maternal neglect and/or abuse within Sisters Grimm. Coupled with an absentee father this made four very independent head strong women, each with an affinity to an element; earth, wind, water or fire.
We follow their heartbreak and struggles as each tries to work out not only who they are, but who they were before.

Highly recommended for fans of low fantasy, coming-of-age and fairytales.

It was a very insightful novel, with a strong cast of characters. I enjoyed the story line very much and would definitely recommend this book.

I love, love, love the premise of this book. The writing throughout had a fairytale, magical quality about it. I thought it was beautiful. The characters were interesting, diverse and pretty good to read about, but I found the way the story moved between each character made it hard to connect with any of them, and I need that as a reader.
I spent a lot of time reading this book and at one point looked down and I was only 40% into it. Each chapter we count down a day and yet it was really dragging its feet to get anywhere. There is a lot of set up. A lot of foreshadowing and while this can work and probably will for a lot of others, it just didn't come together for me.

While for me this was a DNF, I really think those who are wanting a slow burn, character driven book will enjoy it. I hope it does well.

Beautifully written story. Like a fairytale for adults! Clever the way the original Grimm stories are intertwined. A must read.

The Sisters Grimm is a really interesting concept for a novel, and while I enjoyed it on the whole, I found it a bit hard to follow. There’s a good few characters to follow, which makes it hard to keep up, but I liked the premise. Magical realism isn’t the kind of book I usually choose but this was an enjoyable read.