once upon a dream a twisted tale hardcover

You can imagine my surprise when I found that the author was writing dark fairy tale retellings for Disney. This was before I started reviewing and blogging. I have read one of the authors books The Nine Lives of Chloe King. I received this E-ARC via Disney Hyperion and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Everything in between, however? Not for me. It was also a really unique device to use the dream within a dream concept, which was cleverly executed and had me second-guessing much of the action.

I did like how this padded the two-dimensional Disney characters and how it gave Aurora more awareness, over the course of the novel, and Phillip more flaws. There was just a repetition of already known events and inconsequential filler scenes without which this would have been a brilliant read and only half its current length. I can't point out what prolonged this story, at all. I adore slower-paced reads with slow building, suspense, intense character studies, or evocative depictions of the landscape. The story-line was, in theory, a compelling one but I found the pacing too slow for me to care overly much. Whilst there was nothing inherently wrong with it, it just didn't fill me with any feelings. This had such an intriguing premise and had such potential to be a completely bad-ass book.

I was immediately more invested in this, than the first book, from the very first line of, 'A dragon was dead.' The prologue set the story up nicely but I did not, however, appreciate all of the character traits and found the main character, Aurora, to be a little vapid, shallow, and ungrateful, which had me struggling to empathise with her plight. Or, if she does, it probably won't be true love's kiss to awaken her. Once Upon a Dream is the tale of a Sleeping Beauty who might never wake up. This is the second instalment in a series of Disney-inspired retellings by Liz Braswell.

Once upon a dream a twisted tale hardcover