Thank you to NetGalley and Phoenix Reign Publishing for an ARC of this book. All opinions in the review are my own.
I first was drawn to this book due to the cover, because it is stunning and the combination of cover & title made it clear that this was something I would be interested in. Looking at the description just confirmed that this was something I wanted to read – I am always here for a retelling of a fairytale and I haven’t read a retelling of Sleeping Beauty in a while. Well, let me just say that this was nothing like I was expecting.
I think most of my review is going to have spoilers (kinda) so read at your own risk.
I went into this expecting to have some amount of familiarity with the characters – considering it was a retelling – and basically that didn’t happen. Was I disappointed by this? NOPE! Besides the fact that the main character was named Aurora, there is a curse, and there is someone in an eternal sleep, there really aren’t many feelings of Sleeping Beauty in my opinion. There were a lot of mythical elements, and this book is short enough that I was able to read it in just a few days while bouncing between other books as well. I enjoyed all of the characters and it felt like they were pretty well developed considering how short the book is overall for a fantasy book, but at the same time some of it felt a little rushed. It wasn’t super predictable, but when things happened I wasn’t completely surprised that I felt like it was unbelievable. Overall I thought this was a cute book with enjoyable fantasy elements, and definitely on the middle grade side of YA. I give it a solid 4 stars.