Everly Morrow is a sorceress and an 'apple baby'. In the recent past five women had come together to search for a mystical tree to give them the ability to have a baby, and save themselves from certain death. Nine months later six babies were born and an oracle spoke a prophecy - one of those babies would become Snow White and another the Evil Queen. All fairytales are prophecies and they will happen, just not as we might assume. Soon after, a king begins killing all the women and trying to kill the babies. Leaving one of the survivors fleeing to our world with two children. What else was foretold? Will Everly become the Evil Queen? Is it fated to happen? Or is more happening that it seems?

I really enjoyed this book! There was Evil and Good and the prophecy isn't nearly as certain as it seems. What is Evil? What is Good? Who decides? As Everly struggles with those questions, and everyone else's perceptions, assumptions and prejudices, we are with her as she tries to save her family, save her friends and figure out if that Prince, who is quite charming, is destined to love her or betray her.

A solid four stars! Good pacing, good plotting and good characterization. I'm looking forward to the next entry!

already posted on Goodreads! I'd forgotten I'd preordered the book!

I struggled to get into this book, the story was winding and at some times quite confusing. There's definitely an audience for this kind of story, that however was not me.

I didn't end up finishing this title.

Thank you for giving me the chance to review.

It's no secret that retellings are some of my favorite reads. I have also been a fan of Gena Showalter since I read her White Rabbit Chrinicles a few years back. When I saw the news for this book I was so excited and ready for it! I am thankful I got the opportunity to read an early copy. This book did not disappoint! The world building was amazing, and I love the way Gena put her unique twist on this story. It had many elements that kept the story intriguing the whole way through, and I was constantly on edge needing to know how it was going to end up. The story also had a great cast of characters each with a story of their own to face,

I really struggled with this one. I did not finish this book so please ignore if this makes me give a star rating and if it does it will be a middle rating and does not reflect my thoughts.

I wanted to like this book since retellings are my favorite sub-genre. However the writing lines were a little cheesy and I felt like it read like a romance novel without the smut. It did not reflect how teens or even college age youth talk.

The Evil Queen
The Forest of Good and Evil, Book 1

I Picked Up This Book Because: Gena Showalter

The Characters:

Everly Morrow:
Hartly Morrow:
Aubrey Morrow (mom), Truly Morrow (cousin)

The Story:

I wanted to love the book. Ms Showalter is one of my favorite authors but ultimately it was taking too long to get into the story. 15% in and I was still utterly confused. There is a lot of world building and hints, vision and half scenes. I just can’t anymore. I guess I don’t have the patience.



The Random Thoughts:

*DNF so no rating

The Evil Queen is a retelling of the fairy tale, Snow White - with a twist. A prophecy has foretold that the women who have eaten magical apples from the Forbidden Magical Tree will give birth to daughters that will each have a part in the play in the Snow White tale. This story starts out in 'our' world (AKA the mortal world) and focuses on Everly and her sister, Hartly. Soon, events begin to transpire that reveal the prophecy to these two girls, sending them on a journey that forever changes their lives and the lives of countless others.

The best part of this story: the prophecy gives the roles of the players but never specifies which character is supposed to play which role. Readers, as well as the characters themselves, are left constantly guessing who is evil, who is good, who is a protector, etc. This is an interesting dynamic and works fairly well in keeping the story engaging and surprising. However, we are constantly reminded of this aspect of the story to the point where it does lose its novelty along the way and becomes repetitive and boring.

Worst parts of this story: the voice of the main character, Everly, is unbearably annoying. This did get better during the second half of the story but at first, Everly is so obnoxious that it's hard to read. I honestly did not like being inside of her head: it wasn't an interesting or fun or clever place to be. Many of the motivations and actions of the characters are head-scratchers, but Everly in particular is so erratic that it's unforgivable. The writing style of this story as a whole did nothing for me; it blended old fairy tales with more common vernacular that felt really clunky and cringey. The humor fell flat and the romance had plenty of its own cringe-worthy moments.

Overall, The Evil Queen had a promising premise with the ambiguity of the prophecy and the constant wonder of which character would wind up encapsulating the role of Evil Queen or Snow White. However, because of the writing style and the main character, I really couldn't recommend this book to most people. There are far funnier, more well written fairy tale retellings out there.

“Every hero is a villain, and every villain is a hero. It just depends on who you ask.”


The Evil Queen, by author Gena Showalter, is the first installment in the authors The Forest of Good and Evil. This is a modern but twisted fairy-tale retelling of “Little Snow White” by the Brothers Grimm from the evil queen’s point of view as she descends into evil. Everyone has a complex narrative, making the novel even more enjoyable. This isn't your classic retelling. 17-year old Everly Morrow and her twin sister Hartly were raised in the mortal realm; Oklahoma to be exact. Hartly is loved by everyone and Everly is the outcast.

Everly has an obsession with mirrors and daily delusions. She keeps her mirror close to check up on the activities of someone named Angel who she believes to be Snow White. Her sister has an affinity for animals and can put them to sleep. Everly and Hartly are apple babies. They can either end up good or evil. When a white witch tells Aubrey Morrow that King Stephan is dead, it is time for Aubry and her daughters to return to Enchantia from where they escaped from being hunted down and killed by the King.

After learning that she has been siphoning off her own mother and sisters energy which has dire consequences, Everly learns that she can travel via mirror to the land of her birth. Here, Everly is Princess Everly Morrow and her fate is tied to Snow White. She is supposed to be the Evil Queen. But, what if that isn't the part she is supposed to play? What if there are other characters who could play the part instead? She soon meets Prince Charming, AKA Roth Charmaine, (whom she has an insta connection to) and her battle between good and evil begins.

There are no good or bad characters. There is, however, plenty of twists, surprises, and grey areas that could tip one character either way. Everly isn't a bad character. She's actually a pretty interesting character. She's not fragile, but there is a softness to her that makes the reader gravitate and relate to her. She has flaws, and it is those flaws that make her a complex character. She may be the one villain who isn't really a villain except for the fact that everyone in Enchantia has a role to play. Anyone who has to go through all the things she goes through is bound to get mad and want revenge.

As the story progresses, Everly changes as the events unfold around her. It seems as though everyone is against her and wants to harm her. Her type of power is disgusting to everyone there. Her kind is typically hunted down and killed. Her journey is not an easy one despite finding, losing, and finding love of different sorts again along her way. She learns a lot about herself and her character. She must learn how to balance the good within her soul, along with the evil whispering tempting sweet nothings into her mind.

The most curious aspect of this story is uncovering who is really Snow White, The Huntsman, the Seven Dwarves aka protectors, and who is really the Evil Queen. The author created a super creepy forest, beautiful beyond imagining, with a glittering azure mist dancing around gnarled trees, populated by myths and monsters, killer unicorns who are poached for their horns (magic wand, anyone?), two-headed snakes, adorable pixies, intoxicating fairy dust, terrifying spider-scorpion hybrids, flesh-hungry roses, magic, mercenary witches, warrior trolls and trees able to uproot and walk to a new location—amaze of wonders and horrors.

My only real complaint was the formatting of this book. We go from a prologue, to a scene from the past that helps create the setting, then to a scene set in the future, and then we get to the first chapter where we are back in the real world before Everly knew about anything. showing breaks in chapters. My recommendation is to find yourself a copy of the finished book and read it.

The Evil Queen is obviously a retelling of Snow White. In this book, we are following Everly who is said to be the Evil Queen in the prophecies. However, while reading, we wonder who is who and if Everly really is the big bad guy or if every one can sometimes be wearing the Evil Queen's face and do not such great things.

I liked the premise and the potential of the Evil Queen. However, while reading it, I felt like I was reading a 1000 pages book instead of 500+ pages (especially for the first half of it). It dragged for a long time and it's mostly why I'm posting this review a week after its release. I just wanted to get to the end, which felt a little be underwhelming (to me at least). Sometimes the romance picked my interest but it jut wasn't enough. Overall, it's a "meh" for me.

(Thank you to the publisher for letting me read and review an ARC via Netgalley)

While the concept of this book is fascinating and full of potential, and the book itself is wrapped up in lovely packaging, the insides are struggling at every turn to keep themselves together. This is dreadfully immature, so awkward and unpolished that it feels almost like a purposeful mockery of a teen's first shot at writing. Fans of Showalter should expect better, but her foray into YA seems messy and churned out without any real regard for the genre.

This is a 2.5 star book for me. The way the book starts off is not very good, and it was almost a DNF. The story picks up at a little over 20% in when we finally get to the magical land. Is the story original? No. Is it full of cliches? Yes. But I love fantasy and things told from the side of the villain. Even as a child I side-eyed a lot of the heroines of Fairy Tales because their actions seemed inappropriate if not plain old wrong. So reading a how I became the bad guy story appeals to me. Everly is predictably snarky. Roth is problematic and unnecessarily brooding. All the other characters are written more to push the leads story forward and aren’t really developed outside of their roles in the lives of the leads. However, I still had a good time reading this. It’s basically like a b movie version of YA. I wouldn’t pay to see it in the theaters, but I would watch it at 1am on the SyFy channel. I will be reading the next book in the series.

I honestly was expecting a lot more. I was slightly disappointed but it was still an enjoyable read. It just felt like a never-ending backstory with way too much "lets talk about me" feel to it. Like I understand that it's the Evil Queen and all but it became a struggle to deal with it. I feel like this book had the potential to be a 5 star book for me but it just felt like it was too young for the older YA audience it was targeting.

Thank you NetGalley and InkYard Press for an e-ARC of this book!

Title: The Evil Queen
Author: Gena Showalter
Genre: YA, fantasy
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

In Enchantia, fairy tales are real, but they are prophecies of the future. Everly Morrow is raised in the real world and has no idea she’s a princess until she starts to commune with mirrors. Then the truth comes out: Everly is destined to become the Evil Queen.

Except it’s not that simple. Everly meets Roth Charmaine—Prince Charming—and can’t deny she’s attracted to him. But as a sorcerian, she only draws his hate. As their fairy tale unfolds, she faces countless betrayals as she fights to save her family while deciphering the truth.

I generally love Gena Showalter’s novels, and I loved the idea of The Evil Queen. However. I found this one to be not up to Showalter’s usual high quality. Parts of it were very rough and juvenile—and I’ve seen lots of comments to the effect of “remember it’s YA so that’s okay”—but YA should still be well-written, and the characters should be believable and fully fleshed-out. These seemed very one-dimensional to me, and several times they completely did a 180 without us seeing any character growth to account for that. Everly was frankly quite annoying and egotistical and Roth wasn’t much better. I guess I just expected better from an author I generally love—and whose young adult books I love. I did like the actual answer for who each character was supposed to be in the fairy tale.

Gena Showalter is a bestselling author. The Evil Queen is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of Harlequin TEEN/Inkyard Press via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.)

Oh, man, this book was so fantastic to read! I absolutely loved this retelling, that the fairy tales were prophecies, and how people had characteristics of the different players in the tale, and so there were multiple people who could be the different players.

We have the beginning which is set slightly in the future, and so we knew what was going to happen. And as Everly went on her journey, I kinda cringed inside, because like Noel and Ophelia pointed out, it takes heat and pressure to make diamonds.

One thing that I really enjoyed about Everly was her habit of nicknaming people by their initials. Like Snow White and the Evil Queen became SW and EQ. Just a little piece, but I noticed it and I enjoyed it!

I guess Nicolas really is a bad guy, but you think he'd not put his dead lady love's child in harms way. Like, what would she think of his actions? But I guess since he's evil, he doesn't think like that, or doesn't care. Which isn't a good kind of love.

So I'm really looking forward to the future books. Because I think we'll get to explore the other kingdoms, as well as go through other fairy tales. Plus there's Nicolas plotting out there. And maybe Farrah will feel the regret and could work things out with Truly, though she definitely has a lot to make amends for, she had some true Evil Queen moments!

This book was so fantastic, and I can't wait to see where the series goes from here!

The Evil Queen by Gena Showalter is the first book in the young adult fantasy The Forest of Good and Evil series. As one may guess from the title alone this is a retelling of Snow White in a sense that it takes readers way way back to give a background to the one we love to hate herself, the Evil Queen.

Once upon a time in the magical land of Enchantia fairy tales were not only stories but prophecies. At that time in Enchantia there was a law that all newly married women faced, if a woman was not with child within one year of marriage a husband had the right to end the marriage by having his wife beheaded.

One desperate queen at this time banded together with another queen, a princess, a witch and an oracle all in the same position to take from the Tree of New Beginnings to ensure their pregnancies. Legend had it that those babies coming from the tree would be cursed and doomed to a tragic end. After the babies came the oracle predicted they would one day play a part in Snow White and the Evil Queen so in order to protect her Everly Morrow was sent to the mortal world but magic would eventually find her and bring her back to Enchantia.

As much as I love a good, creative retelling I was extremely hesitant to pick this one up simply looking at the length and thinking and that’s only book one? Well, my fears actually did have merit as this was one of those fantasies that to me felt like it would drag on and on quite a bit. There is action and adventure along with some romance so I’m sure those that like slow builds will have more patience than I but for me I was a bit meh in the end wishing the creativity made up for the pace.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

This is the first book in The Forrest of Good and Evil Series and I loved it! Gena Showalter gives the readers a fantastic new story about Snow White and the Evil Queen bringing together a dynamic story and some amazing new characters. Everly’s life is full of secrets and she finds out that she is from a magical world in another dimension. That the fairy tales her mother has told her for years are about a prophecy that she can’t escape, is she The Evil Queen? This is a dark fantasy read, fast paced, with tons of action and adventure, twists and turns, suspense, love and sacrifice. I can’t wait to read the next book in the series!

This book surprised me a lot, I really liked the storyline! There are so many fantastic characters I liked! I liked the premise of it it just the beginning felt a little bit slow but I can see why since it’s new story so Genna wanted to make us see this new world . There was a bit of romance to the story too which was great!

I couldn't stop reading! From page one, I was hooked!

Gena Showalter has written The Evil Queen exceedingly well. I cared for Everly Morrow and wanted to follow her plight. Together, we walked side-by-side through her journey.

The Evil Queen is a must read! You will love it!

My Thoughts:

The Evil Queen was a thrilling and adventurous page-turner, that I didn't want to stop reading, for even a moment. For being over five hundred pages long, this story didn't lull or have any boring parts! The characters and plot kept me on my toes, and made the story fly by!

Ms. Showalter delivered a unique and enthralling Snow White retelling, where fairytale is prophecy, and our main character has to figure out which role she will play. Everly Morrow strongly believes that her destiny is to be that of the Evil Queen.

The author whisked me away to Enchantia, a beautiful, but dangerous place. The imagery of the enchanted forest was magical. The descriptions of the characters and animals were so vivid that I could see them perfectly and their unique personalities emanated from every page. I loved being inside of Everly's head. At certain times I connected with her, and with all that happened to her, I could see how it could lead to her becoming the evil queen, but hoped that she would find a way to be better than everyone expected her to be. I loved reading about her powers of sorcery and all that she could do.

Roth, Everly's love interest, was a total alpha male. The dynamic between these two was sexy, flirty, and intense at times. He was highly loved and respected by his people,. There were parts of him that I loved, and some decisions that he made that really frustrated me. Roth was battle worn, and very stoic. I loved how Everly brought out a less serious side in him.

All of the secondary characters were so much fun to read about. We got a witch, an oracle, and various family members that were a part of the Snow White Prophecy. I enjoyed getting to know all of these characters, and reading about all of their magical abilities. Along the way we encountered fairies, trolls, sirens, and a variety of other mythical creatures!

I contemplated the real life parallels that Ms. Showalter addressed. As we go through life, at some point we will encounter rejection, betrayal, tragedy, and grief. We have free choice. We can become bitter, selfish, and angry, or we can pick ourselves up, and strive to accomplish positive growth, learn important life lessons, and become the best version of ourselves.

Everything in The Evil Queen fascinated me, from the setting, to the characters, to wanting to know who was who in the prophecy, and how everything would play out. Ms. Showalter shows readers that people are complex and aren't usually all of one thing. At different times and under different circumstances, each of us could fulfill the essence of what it means to be Snow White, The Evil Queen, The Huntsman, or one of the seven protectors. Important themes and questions such as how much of our life is destiny, and how much of what happens is based on our free will, and the decisions that we make, had me in deep thought. Self-fulfilling Prophecy was something I heavily pondered as well.

I am thrilled that this book in the first in The Forest of Good and Evil Series. In the story, we learned that in different lands, different fairytale prophecies were playing out, such as Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid. I can't wait to continue this series and read each of these fairytale retellings.

If you are looking for a magical journey, where you are transported to a different place, this is the story for you. If you are a reader, who enjoys a unique and romantic fairytale retelling with a twist, a beautiful setting, fascinating characters, and an addictive plot, I highly recommend you read, The Evil Queen by Gena Showalter.

4.5 Stars!

Let me start off by saying that when it comes to villains I will always give the read a chance, always. There is something divinely compelling about a well written villain. With that being said, this book took my expectations, turned them around and rearranged what I may now view as a potential villain.

Gena Showalter has done it yet again, swept me off my feet into a world and story that (may seem like others) does not remotely compare. Her world building is strong, but her character growth and understanding are where the true jewels lie.

Everly Morrow is destined to be the Evil Queen. Foretold by fates of the land she must combat the desires to be evil and to not be, all while trying to figure out who she really is and what her future really holds. Everly is a dominant female character who struggles to accept that it is okay to be gentle and vulnerable around others. She keeps secrets and masters the ability to accept she can't change what other people perceive about her. Her romance with Roth is hopelessly romantic while being frustrating an destructive. Roth is the perfect male lead, brooding, a wickedly intelligent warrior, and understanding in a way Everly so desperately needs as she struggles through their prophecy.

The storyline flows only from Everly's POV but the depth of it is amazing. Showalter has taken the Snow White plight and crafted it into an epic adventure that anyone can relate to. Some times we are the hero and some times we are the villain, but love should always be the answer.

An amazing retelling of Snow White from the Evil Queen's POV. It was dark and magical, romantic and heartbreaking. You will love Everly and laugh, cry and rage right along side her. If ever there was a villain I wanted to root for it would be Everly. Hands down. I loved this book and this heroic villain!

Props to the author for writing such an awesome take on this fairy tale. The world she creates and the magic she introduces was all mind blowing and amazing. Then there's the very complex characters she brings to life. I was beyond a doubt, emotionally attached to everyone I read about. From riddles galore Noel and her sidekick Ophelia to protective Vikander and Saxon. No surprise that Everly is my favorite lady lead but I also loved sweet Hartley and Roth!

If you like fantasy reads that are dark, a touch romantic, emotionally gripping, with morally gray characters and tons of action, The Evil Queen should be added to your tbr.

Would I recommend? Yes. I loved this book and I don't really like series but for Everly and Roth, I don't mind. (Also there are so many other characters you're going to want to see more of! Ty for one and definitely Allura!)