Talk about a twist!

I love retellings, they are always so much more exciting then the original fairy tales. Gena really took this one into a whole another dimension sort of speak and wonderfully crafted a fairytale not made for the faint of hearts. Love, loved it! ( )

I liked it and look forward to more in this series. ( )

While I liked the book, there just seemed to be something missing. It just didn't seem as good as her other writings. Story line is very interesting, but there was quite a bit of repetitive writing and reaching for bigger word vocabulary. It felt like she was trying too hard to add in strange wording for the simplest of meanings. I'm thinking the thesaurus was consulted a few too many times. While the words were interesting & different, to me, it took away from what she was trying to write. They just didn't seem to fit and made the sentence off.
I'm holding out hope the second book will be better. ( )

This book was so much fun to read!

I am a bit leery when it comes to fairy tale story retellings but for some reason, I really enjoyed this one. To be honest, Snow White is one of my least favourite fairy tales but I found this revamped modernized verson interesting and refreshing. I like the focus on the Evil Queen but I also really enjoyed how the author created her complex character. She wasn't all good or all bad and at times she could be contrary and sarcastic. I think one of the things that appealed to me with the story was the psychology behind the Evil Queen's behavior and actions. I could relate to how an action by someone else can affect one's behavior in the sense of putting on false fronts to fool people. I'll make you hate me because you are going to hate me anyway mentality. I don't usuallly read the second book in a series unless I really liked the previous book in the series. I will be reading book 2. ( )

I never thought I was a fan of retellings, and then I got into fairy tale reimaginings. Those I like. A lot. I especially enjoy anything that imagines the story from the villain’s point of view. The Evil Queen by Gena Showalter fits that bill perfectly.

In The Evil Queen, Ms. Showalter envisions a world in which the fairy tale characters know their stories but don’t know which role they play in those stories. While the characters toss around words like prophecy and fate, they soon realize that choice plays a much more important role than any preset prophecy can predict.

All this means is that characters like Everly, convinced she is the Evil Queen, get a chance to fight their supposed destiny and achieve a happily-ever-after. It is this fight that makes Everly such a compelling character. Yes, she has a tendency to enjoy violence and want revenge against those who wrong her loved ones, but it is her fierce loyalty and devotion to those loved ones that sets her apart from everyone else. When everything she does is fighting to save the life of her twin sister, it makes it difficult to fault her decisions.

Plus, Everly is just so darn likable. She agonizes over the possibility that she is the Evil Queen and dreads the possibility. Yet, when faced with choices that mean potentially becoming the villain, she does not hesitate to make those choices if it means saving her sister. Her choices are always altruistic. She fights her growing attraction to Roth because it would distract her from her mission to save her family. Similarly, she fights her powers because she does not want to drain others and potentially kill them. In many cases, it would be so easy to make the selfish choice of love and self-protection, but she doesn’t do so time and again.

While The Evil Queen does have a sequel, I love how this story ends, so much so that I have no desire to read the sequel. It may be open-ended, but it is so in a good way, where you know that Everly will find a way to get her happily-ever-after now that she knows the secrets of the prophecies. You don’t need to read about the pending battles between her and a certain Snow White-type character to know that they are going to be messy and complicated but successful in the long run. The Evil Queen is a satisfying retelling of the Snow White tale in which evil means something a bit different. ( )