Snow Whyte and the Queen of Mayhem by Melissa Lemon
- Pub. Date: December 11, 2012
- Publisher:Cedar Fort, Inc.
- Pages:288
- Amazon/Goodreads/Book Depository
First Line: This is a story about a princess, and, unfortunately it is also about a queen.
Review: I love reading fairytale retellings so of course I jumped at the chance to review Lemon's take on Snow White.
In this spin the evil queen is actually Kat's (Snow White) mother, not the step mother and she still of course wants her dead but in this retelling she tries to kill her while she is still just a baby. The king runs off with her and takes her to the safety of Uncle Barney who lives in an apple orchard in the next kingdom over. The queen thought her to be dead since she did send an executioner after them and the executioner came upon the kings ripped up dead body which happened due to thieves murdering him and then animals finishing the rest of him off, and the executioner just assumed the princess was killed as well and reported back to the queen.
Anyways the story really started up when Kat became older and her uncle who was for so long such a wonderful man taking care of her all of a sudden lost his sight and turned to alcohol and then started mistreating Kat. It was a little hard to adjust to his personality changing up like that since I got so used to him being a caring uncle who really took Kat under his wings and then next thing you know he is putting his hands on her and emotionally abusing her as well.
What I didn't expect going in but it was a nice surprise that really worked was that the Magic Mirror was the narrator. At first I was skeptical but as I kept reading I really grew to like the man who was trapped in the mirror by the queen. And what I liked more was how in this one the man in the mirror had a huge role in the overall plot, and he was able to tell the queen partial truths and get away with it with the queen never finding out until it was too late.
I really liked the characters, Kat even though at times she felt to be a little clueless ( I mean who can blame her, she had no idea who she really was and was told to never leave the apple orchard ) was a character who when times called for it was very strong and determined. I loved Jeremy Simkins and the dwarf's especially Pokole, the friendship that grew between him and Kat was very sweet.
I did like some of the twists and shocking revealings of certain characters, it put a nice spin on things. The one thing that I didn't really like was how rushed the ending felt. I was just sitting there like "Wow that was it." The fall of the queen fell flat in my opinion. Overall this was a creative spin on Snow White and I enjoyed it for the most part.
