Poisoned
by Katherine Pine
Date Read: 1/10/2013
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
OK, I started off having read the first 10 chapters for free from Smashwords. I got hooked. So I was very excited when the complete book was finally finished and available...it is actually the first ebook I've ever paid for. So I'm actually a little disappointed, but perhaps I went in with higher expectations than I should have...don't get me wrong, it was still good, but at first I thought it was going to be a 5 star book. But after THAT ending and the typos, I can't justify 5 stars anymore. =(
Ok, so on to the review. This is a twist on the traditional Snow White tale. It is a trilogy that will span of the length of the 3 books. This book only got to the point of the huntsman (so you would naturally think it was slow, but it actually wasn't). In this tale, Snow White is a princess who was born poisoned. She is the only baby to have survived the poison. But being poisoned, means she can never kiss anyone, because when she does, they die quickly. People are even afraid to touch her. She accidentally kisses her mother when she is 4 years old and she dies, and the kingdom locks her up. Her father disappears. In comes her Uncle and cousin, Rose. Rose takes to the little poisoned princess, and lets her out of her cage. The two grow up close and grow to love each other. I bet you can see where this is gonna go. Snow White is out in the poisoned woods one day, and saves someone, someone who ends up being pretty important. And eventually the events of that day will start to push Snow White and Rose apart.
I feel like this story had such a unique take on the Snow White story. I enjoyed trying to figure out who everyone was going to be. I thought the "mirror" was actually a very interesting aspect. I like how it kind of all came together towards the end of this book. I'm interested to see how it progresses in the sequels.
I love Snow White's character. She had me hooked from the very beginning. She is hurt. She doesn't exactly feel sorry for herself. She feels so guilty for killing her mother, and that has taken quite a toll on her. And then Rose saved her from her dungeon. I really started to get annoyed with Snow White childish attachment to Rose, but really, when you think about it, Rose was the one who saved her, and at such a young age, that has to have an impact on you. But at times, I felt like she was a little too childish, a little too dependent and weak around Rose. I wanted her to find her strength. Specifically in one of the ending scenes. But up until the end she still loves Rose. I didn't get it.
I really liked Max also. Thought about 70% of the way through, he's no longer a main part of the story. The story's focus turned. But while he was in it, I enjoyed it. There was a scene in which he and Snow White were flirting, and I felt like I was there. That was probably one of my favorite scenes from the book. I'm looking forward to his involvement later in the series.
Rose. Oh boy, what can I say about Rose. At the beginning, I doubted whether I could trust her or not. About 25% in, I knew that I couldn't. This book was fairly predictable in who was going to be who. I found that about 50% of the way through the book, I hated Rose. I didn't want to read from her stupid, evil, jealous perspective. I just wanted to skip back to the Snow White parts. But at the same time, it was interesting to see her character transform.
I thought the setting was well described. Now, I've read and seen a lot of Snow White books and movies, so I have a fairly good idea of what most castles and woods look like. But the description of the poison was nice. The colors it would change in the evenings. Unique. I liked it. I can see a lot of similarities from Once Upon a Time and Snow White and the Huntsman. There was a point where I pictured Ambrose as looking like Rumpelstiltskin from Once Upon a Time, and I even read his line with his weird accent!!
The pacing was actually pretty good. I realized about half way through that it wasn't going to get very far into the actual Snow White story. But it surprisingly wasn't slow. It actually had a lot of character set up. You could really see characters transforming and why they made certain decisions. And I think that was a really unique way to tell the story. We usually don't get all that information. And there were a lot of characters to build for this story. And I don't even know exactly how all of them fit in yet.
Something that bugged me in this book, however, were the typos. She supposedly took 2 months longer than planned to finish this book because it was being edited so much. So then I wonder why there were still so many typos. Some of them were actually misspellings of words. Some were missing words in sentences, or the wrong words in sentences. Which we all do. But how did all the editors not catch those?! Some of them were really irritating, some I was able to gloss over. So that had started the lower score for me. But I always hate when people give a bad score just because of spelling or grammatical errors. So, please see the next paragraph.
Ok, let's talk about the ending. Actually, I don't even think you can call that an ending. This is really what caused the loss of a star. This book didn't end. It was cut-off mid paragraph! Right in the climax of the scene!!! There was no resolution to this story at all. It had beginning, and middle. That's it. You can't just end a book like that. I know authors are all about the cliffhangers, but give me a break. You should have at least finished this scene and then left it at, "what is Snow White going to do now?". Gah. If you want to see the last sentence of this book, read the spoiler: [SPOILER: "Moving his hand faster than my eyes could follow, he pressed his knife to my throat." ] Really? This is just about as bad as the Vampire Diaries book one. There's one thing to have a cliffhanger, there's another thing to not end your book. And this was a book that was not concluded.
Overall I enjoyed the book though, and I look forward to the sequels to this interesting take on Snow White. But I just wish it hadn't been tainted with that ending. And, of course, the ending is what you think about the most because it's freshest in your mind. And it is what leaves you feeling at the end.
Ok, so on to the review. This is a twist on the traditional Snow White tale. It is a trilogy that will span of the length of the 3 books. This book only got to the point of the huntsman (so you would naturally think it was slow, but it actually wasn't). In this tale, Snow White is a princess who was born poisoned. She is the only baby to have survived the poison. But being poisoned, means she can never kiss anyone, because when she does, they die quickly. People are even afraid to touch her. She accidentally kisses her mother when she is 4 years old and she dies, and the kingdom locks her up. Her father disappears. In comes her Uncle and cousin, Rose. Rose takes to the little poisoned princess, and lets her out of her cage. The two grow up close and grow to love each other. I bet you can see where this is gonna go. Snow White is out in the poisoned woods one day, and saves someone, someone who ends up being pretty important. And eventually the events of that day will start to push Snow White and Rose apart.
I feel like this story had such a unique take on the Snow White story. I enjoyed trying to figure out who everyone was going to be. I thought the "mirror" was actually a very interesting aspect. I like how it kind of all came together towards the end of this book. I'm interested to see how it progresses in the sequels.
I love Snow White's character. She had me hooked from the very beginning. She is hurt. She doesn't exactly feel sorry for herself. She feels so guilty for killing her mother, and that has taken quite a toll on her. And then Rose saved her from her dungeon. I really started to get annoyed with Snow White childish attachment to Rose, but really, when you think about it, Rose was the one who saved her, and at such a young age, that has to have an impact on you. But at times, I felt like she was a little too childish, a little too dependent and weak around Rose. I wanted her to find her strength. Specifically in one of the ending scenes. But up until the end she still loves Rose. I didn't get it.
I really liked Max also. Thought about 70% of the way through, he's no longer a main part of the story. The story's focus turned. But while he was in it, I enjoyed it. There was a scene in which he and Snow White were flirting, and I felt like I was there. That was probably one of my favorite scenes from the book. I'm looking forward to his involvement later in the series.
Rose. Oh boy, what can I say about Rose. At the beginning, I doubted whether I could trust her or not. About 25% in, I knew that I couldn't. This book was fairly predictable in who was going to be who. I found that about 50% of the way through the book, I hated Rose. I didn't want to read from her stupid, evil, jealous perspective. I just wanted to skip back to the Snow White parts. But at the same time, it was interesting to see her character transform.
I thought the setting was well described. Now, I've read and seen a lot of Snow White books and movies, so I have a fairly good idea of what most castles and woods look like. But the description of the poison was nice. The colors it would change in the evenings. Unique. I liked it. I can see a lot of similarities from Once Upon a Time and Snow White and the Huntsman. There was a point where I pictured Ambrose as looking like Rumpelstiltskin from Once Upon a Time, and I even read his line with his weird accent!!
The pacing was actually pretty good. I realized about half way through that it wasn't going to get very far into the actual Snow White story. But it surprisingly wasn't slow. It actually had a lot of character set up. You could really see characters transforming and why they made certain decisions. And I think that was a really unique way to tell the story. We usually don't get all that information. And there were a lot of characters to build for this story. And I don't even know exactly how all of them fit in yet.
Something that bugged me in this book, however, were the typos. She supposedly took 2 months longer than planned to finish this book because it was being edited so much. So then I wonder why there were still so many typos. Some of them were actually misspellings of words. Some were missing words in sentences, or the wrong words in sentences. Which we all do. But how did all the editors not catch those?! Some of them were really irritating, some I was able to gloss over. So that had started the lower score for me. But I always hate when people give a bad score just because of spelling or grammatical errors. So, please see the next paragraph.
Ok, let's talk about the ending. Actually, I don't even think you can call that an ending. This is really what caused the loss of a star. This book didn't end. It was cut-off mid paragraph! Right in the climax of the scene!!! There was no resolution to this story at all. It had beginning, and middle. That's it. You can't just end a book like that. I know authors are all about the cliffhangers, but give me a break. You should have at least finished this scene and then left it at, "what is Snow White going to do now?". Gah. If you want to see the last sentence of this book, read the spoiler: [SPOILER: "Moving his hand faster than my eyes could follow, he pressed his knife to my throat." ] Really? This is just about as bad as the Vampire Diaries book one. There's one thing to have a cliffhanger, there's another thing to not end your book. And this was a book that was not concluded.
Overall I enjoyed the book though, and I look forward to the sequels to this interesting take on Snow White. But I just wish it hadn't been tainted with that ending. And, of course, the ending is what you think about the most because it's freshest in your mind. And it is what leaves you feeling at the end.
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