DNF at 28%. I had such high hopes for this book, especially after hearing nothing but great things for the Dorothy Must Die series for years, but I just couldn't get through it. I love fairytale retellings and had yet to come across a Snow White one. This seemed like such an original twist on the story but this did not live up to its potential. The depiction of mental illness was so non-existent that it could be considered offensive to some. It was hard to believe that Snow had been in a mental institution for 13 years when all she seemed to do was bite people. Also, the love triangle was so cliche and I just couldn't put myself through it anymore.

Loved her first series but I think I love this even more. With it awesome twists throughout I didn't see the ending.

this was a good, read. I didn't really enjoy it as much as I enjoyed her Dorothy series, but was still captivating.

A gorgeous re-telling. Danielle Paige is such a talent author and she is made made for writing re-telling as she is able to twist a classic into something dark and magical!

17-year-old snow has been incarcerated in the Whittaker Secure Mental institute for most of her life.

The regime there is bleak, routine, and full of anguish for Snow as she is kept away from her one true sole mate Bale (who is also a patient there).

Just when it seems that there is not really much hope, Snow starts to encounter a vision in her dreams who tells her that there is another land waiting for her ‘just beyond the tree’.

The story then really speeds up as Snow has to decide whether the visions are:
part of her condition
or, a result of the drugs that the institute is making her take,
or, whether there could really be the land of Algid out there waiting for her
Once the story moves from one world to another, Snow becomes a classic adventure genre story. It also turns out that there's a prophecy to fulfil and an evil king to thwart.

The land of Algid is nicely described and has a good range of fantasy characters to keep the plot moving along. I particularly liked the coven of robbers with their ability to store magic for future use and the fact that they were tremendously loyal (despite claiming that they all stood for themselves).

Snow spends a lot of time in this novel deciding which person she really loves in a classic triangle situation which resulted in slightly too much monologue for me at several points and it slows down the story.

Finally, there are also lots of similar/borrowed elements from other fantasy novels which you'll either like or will really annoy you - you've been warned :)

Many thanks to Netgalley for providing this book for review.

I actually can't get over how disappointing this book was for me, mostly because I'd (a) heard great things about Danielle Paige's previous 'Dorothy Must Die' series, and (b) been excited about the prospect of reading a good fairy tale retelling. While there were specific elements of this book that I liked (certain parts of the world-building, the inclusion of LGBT relationships, the fast pace) these also came with their own problems as well as the book having many other aspects that I did not enjoy. It took me a very long time to get through this book because I found myself exceedingly more frustrated and disinterested in it as time went on.

Everything about this book was VAGUE. Let's start with the world-building: while parts of it I thought were pretty and nicely imagined, most of it was barely constructed imaginings of a pretty generic fantasy world. Forests, castles and villages, a bit of ice and a few penguins and not much more. Even the name of the world sounded generic. In terms of the characters, bland was definitely a word that could describe them. I found the heroine, Snow, frustrating and changeable. Her THREE love interests (I'm not even making that up, why on earth is this girl going around falling for EVERY guy she meets) were pretty samey and Paige didn't give us time to get to know them because she moved from character to character without giving them the slightest ounce of development. Yes, there were LGBT relationships in this book and an argument could be made that at least Paige was diverse, but let me tell you there was nothing likeable about them, they were just there and briefly mentioned. It made the whole thing feel like a list being checked off one by one. Not to mention Paige instantly loses any 'diversity' points with her pretty derogatory view of patients in the asylum where biting, wailing and absolutely no understanding of mental illness is the norm. Ugh.

The plot itself had the potential to be good, even if it was filled to the brim with tropes I've seen a thousand times before in books I've already read. The trouble was that while I usually like fast pacing, this was at the speed of light and gave no time for pause or adjustment to the new setting. Snow just travelled from scene to scene, filling what could have been the perfect time to actually expand upon the story/characters or world with pointless and repetitive inner ramblings (I won't even call them monologues because they felt a little incoherent at times) and conflicted thoughts about which guy she likes best. There was no chemistry, no feeling, nothing. The whole thing just felt like a flow of moments that didn't really connect and I very much doubt I'll be picking up the next book in the series. I can only hope that if I do get to read 'Dorothy Must Die', it will be significantly better.