I really wanted to like this. I tried really hard. I paused and left it, started again, re-read the beginning, started from where I left off... Rinse and repeat. I did it all. It just didn't work its magic on me at all. Shame that as it does have some really great reviews. Just not the book for me... Sorry
DNF at about 30%

It took me a little while to get into this, hence the 4* rating, but that is probably because o got a bit confused between the different POVs and what was happening.
However, as soon as I got into the swing of things I really started to get hooked and I loved to see the different characters and see their different lives. I really loved the ending, it was a beautiful way to end things.
I did love the plot to this book, it was so unique, but I am a sucker for fairytales so any spin on them, especially the brothers Grimm will have me interested.

Did not finish
I got 25% into this book, but it wasn't my cup of tea. While I really enjoyed The Sisters'Grimm's atmosphere, I wasn't very engaged in the plot, nor with the characters. I still think people who love atmospheric reads and books inspired by fairy tales will love it, but alas, it wasn't for me.

I tried to read the first few chapters but I did not gel with the writing very well and did not find the story compelling enough to continue, and therefore will not be able to give a full and thorough review. I do see its appeal to other readers however and will recommend if I feel it would suit a certain reader.

I love the idea of using fairy tales to tell a modern story, but somehow this plot didn't work that well for me. I kept waiting for some sparks to happen. The multiple pov didn't help either, I got confused several times at the beginning, even though I got used to it after while the things didn't get better. I don't know, maybe it wasn't the right moment to read this book. I will keep an eye for future books by this author.

The sisters Grimm is the story of four sisters from different mothers connected through same destiny. They all are born of a man who will have them chose or die fighting.

I finished reading this book some time back but to collect my thoughts on this was difficult.
This is not exactly a happy read. It is full of sorrows and grief of not one but 4 girls. But with sadness, there is also hope,love, togetherness, and all that makes reading a dark book worthwhile. The story is of 4 strong girls who have has control over one of the natural elements and they can manipulate it to create a kind of magic. But the again this is not entirely a fantasy book. It lies on the line separating reality from magical realism. The characters and places are all very real and at the same time the magical parts of it are difficult to differentiate as dreams or reality.

The underlying theme of this book is this tug of war between good and evil, right & wrong. Menna may have used a fantastical worlds & war to represent it but it’s a war we all fight..each day, every day.

I loved all four stories but I think I love Liyana the best or maybe it’s scarlet. I can’t chose. And if I have definitely have to, I think it would be scarlet. She goes through so much but she gives it a good fight. Also, her love for her grandmother is inspiring.

It is a jumbled read though. While the plot necessitated it, the constant switch of stories and timelines left me disoriented at places.

Overall,it was a good read for me.

Thank you to netgalley and Bantam Press for allowing me the chance to read this for my honest review. I really enjoyed reading this. It was quite an interesting concept an it worked well.

Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: One Star
Okay. Usually, when I'm not enjoying a book, I try and get 25% of the way through to really give it a good run up at convincing me it's worth my time. And, while the 15% of the way I got through The Sisters Grimm didn't take me that much reading time, I just did not want to continue at all.

The first thing that hit me was that it felt very Disney: wishy-washy fairytale/fantasy with kind of sickly sweet but very bluntly 'twisted' darkness that it just kind of felt silly. You also have quite a lot of sex which is so obviously added to make it feel 'mature', but just makes it feel even more misjudged and childish because it's completely pointless. How old are these characters anyway? Aren't they supposed to be approaching their 18th birthday? I have nothing against girls owning their sexuality but the characters are written with such freedom, independence and priorities that make them feel like they're in their mid-twenties and that's honestly confusing.

The changing perspectives definitely don't help this when they're entirely unmotivated and near impossible to distinguish without the named headings. POVs even change within chapters for seemingly no reason, mixing differently storylines until there's way too much going on and you can't separate one thing from the others. It's almost like Praag was worried that we'd forget about the other characters if she focused on one at a time so she just squished them all together when maybe the book should have been focused on just one of them.

The Sisters Grimm is also so overwritten with vague information-dumping. 15% is a decent amount through a nearly 500-page book and I still have no idea about how this world is supposed to work - even though 70% of what I read was shoving worldbuilding down my throat. I just wanted to shout at it to stop trying to be mysterious and actually tell me a story. The diversity of its protagonists could've driven this, but it fades when no one feels distinctive. A lot of effort went into detailing every tiny little thing that happened in their childhood and with their families, but I honestly couldn't tell you which unnecessary exposition was for which character. I think that's actually the main problem: the book is so concerned with telling us everything that happened before the story that it never gets to the fricking story.

And, yes, I only read 15%. Surely this changes? Well, reading other reviews, I'm not convinced it does. I would've been willing to press through if things progressed further than these tiny snippets of each person's melodramatic domestic life, but it doesn't seem like it will. (I actually very rarely refer to other people's reviews while reading a book, but I needed some confirmation that I wasn't wasting my time - which, sadly, I did not find). It's fair to say Praag lost my trust in her to tell me a story pretty quickly and sadly I just didn't want to keep reading.

I love Grims fairy tales so when I say this book all over bookstagram I couldn't wait to give it a try. I wasn't disappointed it was a gripping read and beautifully written. Thank you for the chance to read this

I found the writing to be erratic and couldn't find anything likeable about any of the characters. Even by 40% in to the story, I still didn't feel it was actually going anywhere and in the end had to put the book down.

I loved this book. It's a fantastic stand alone about 4 sisters finding each other to take down an evil that is responsible for the death of their mothers. POV chapters were distinct, character growth was well plotted and brilliantly portrayed. I was disappointed with the end but the previous 98% was brilliant.

The Sisters Grimm was a special book because it was one of my anticipated reads, I did like it but there was something that left me wanting for more. I wish it was in a good way but it’s not? With a name like that, you can hardly expect me to not have a few expectations. I am not saying that those expectations weren’t met because they were but I think what I mean by that is I expected something and received something else entirely. I simply wasn’t ready for the kind of fantasy that I was presented with.

I think this book is fairly original and does veer off from the original works quite a lot. It is not as grim but it is fresh and offers some truly interesting stories about four drastically different women that I really enjoyed. It’s about four sisters who have forgotten over time that they are sisters and possess different abilities and each represents a different element. There are interesting concepts that I have rarely seen in fantasy but have always wanted more of, such as the astrological effects on the main characters, dream bindings, venturing into a different world only through dreams. These concepts, on their own, are not original but the way they are represented are wholly in a different way and I loved that about this one.

We are first introduced to Goldie, who’s working at a hotel, trying to make life better for her younger brother Teddy. She sometimes steals for Teddy from the hotel guests, mostly things they wouldn’t remember anyway. She represents earth in a way. Then we have Liyana, an Olympic athlete who had to let go of her dreams because of a tragic accident. She represents water in the most obvious way, she was a swimmer, she still is but not on the same level as she used to be. She has some tough choices to make.

Scarlet has one of the most touching circumstances, for me, for some reason. She is running her family’s cafe while also taking care of her dementia ridden grandmother. I think she represents fire but I had one friend who thought it was earth she represented, who knows? She could be both. And then, lastly, we have Bea, I think I found her the hardest to like. It’s not that she’s an unlikable character but something about her just didn’t work for me in the long run. She had had to make some hard choices in life and I sympathized with that but at the end of the day, she is not my favourite of the lot.

There are more characters in the book, like Leo, who plays an important role, plot-wise but could have been relegated to the secondary character position, I think. There are entirely too many POVs in my opinion, like ten of them! Then there are different timelines, as the characters as young children and then their grown up counterparts plus the whole dreaming up different world scenarios, yeah, it was a bit hard to keep track of, if I am being completely honest. It is also possible that I read it during the time I was feeling super low and concentration wasn’t the best but I think even under ideal conditions, it would have been hard. That’s one of the points that brings down the star rating to less than five.

The ‘present’ timeline is when the girls’ birthday is coming around and weird and strange things are happening around them, the other timeline is from years ago when the girls met for the first time and forgot about it entirely. The girls also dream of Everwhere, a place only they can visit and it’s this magical place where it’s always autumn. It’s a story of how they plan to meet with their father and on the way, face some hardships.

Overall, I think this book is super interesting and while it’s not the best book I have read so far, but it had potential and it had some interesting themes. I think I would definitely be checking out more of this author’s works.

My daughter recently has been fascinated with Grimm tales and this piqued my attention. When I saw the title and amazing cover I had to pick it up as I love a bewitching story.

I really enjoyed this book it is told over four young ladies who all seem to have some form of connection but they don't remember events that happened in childhood that are leading them to their fast approaching 18th birthdays.

The characters were well thought out and described and you got to know them both as young ladies living their human lives and the potential of who they could be as young Grimm ladies.

As the book gained momentum and events started to unfold I found the pages flying past and before I knew it I was heading towards the end. This book captured my imagination and took me soaring with them whilst highlighting their real life challenges as none of them had been blessed with easy teen years on Earth.

I felt the book ended quite quickly after the momentum it had built to get to the end point but I think this was because I was so invested that once that had realised who they were I wanted to read even more about them.

A superb book that transports you to another world where these Grimm Sisters have to embrace who they are as part of their fight for survival.

I absolutely love a good twisted fairytale and with ‘Grimm’ in the title this is what I was expecting. Did I get what I was expecting? Not entirely, but what I did get was a fantasy book unlike anything I’ve read recently and is not afraid to lean into the darkness of Grimm.

It is a book which is incredibly intricate in its storytelling, weaving together four separate character POVs across multiple timelines and two different worlds - our own and the mysterious (I want to go there now) Everwhere. Meena Vsn Praag handles the complexities of her narrative with aplomb, never missing a beat. The four sisters Goldie, Bea, Scarlet and Liyana have diversity and each have very distinct personalities and back stories laced with domestic abuse, loss and alienation, that add fuel to their individual journeys.

The book is definitely a slow burner building to a climax that is done and dusted quickly. You are left with lots of questions on what are the consequences of this finale. I’m hoping there is more to come. Apparently the four sisters are representations of classic fairytale characters. Can you guess which?

Intricate story which leaves you wanting more ⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of five

Loved this dark fantasy in which good overcomes evil, females win out over males and all told with building pace, good characterisation and a great premise. Will definitely help you escape the reality of lockdown!

I started this one quite a long time ago now and have only just marked it as DNF as I was so undecided on it. I got to 41% but just couldn't bring myself to pick it back up. I left it on my 'Currently Reading' list on GoodReads for about 5 1/2 months from the point I started it. I just really couldn't make up my mind if I liked it or not. I don't feel like I got 41% through the book plot wise, it felt like there was a lot of words not saying a lot. And I don't mean in a slow burn, world building, type of writing. I don't feel like the plot advanced or I learnt anything more about the world.

After I hit about 30% I started to feel like this wasn't for me, but the book had had such amazing rave reviews that I thought 'I'll persevere, maybe it just takes time' but I found myself avoiding picking up my kindle because I knew I would feel bad reading something other than this on it.

I'm not a fan of the format of the book - it was like it was passage after passage about each sister in turn, no real chapters as such and you never stuck with one sister long enough to really get invested in them.

I did enjoy the premise and I think if the writing style was more up my street I would have like this more. Its a 1.5* out of 5* for me (I've upped it to 2* on GoodReads as I did like the premise, etc.

I'd never heard about this author, but I now I have, I've ordered more of her works. Such a captivating read, that will stand up to repeat reading.

The Sisters Grimm was almost an ode to the fairy tales we grew up with. Whilst each sister has an element of one of Grimm’s fairy tales, I wouldn’t call this a retelling because it feels so uniquely different to the original tales (both dark Grimm ones and the Disney classics).

Goldie has an earth element power and as her name suggests is our Goldilocks. I found that Goldie’s story was the most focused on and had a lot of depth. We see her struggle through her mundane life as she is the sole carer for her brother, and works in a local hotel. But as the book progresses she grows into a stronger character with the help of her sisters, and love interest.

Liyana has the element of water – and my first thoughts were that she was the little mermaid (but stuck on land). Ana is definitely the hardest to pin down for which story she represents, however after Goldie she seems to get the most attention. Her story with her aunt Nyasha organising an arranged marriage for her, whilst she just wants to be with her girlfriend Kumiko was so well written. We really saw why she was conflicted, and why she would want to return to Everwhere.

Scarlett is our resident red riding hood, with grandmother and all. She holds the element of fire and has a bit of a tragic backstory (as do all the girls). Scarlett’s storyline outside of Everwhere fits very closely with the original tale and is almost immediately recognisable. However, I think because of this she got a little bit less depth than her sisters and leant heavily on assumed traits.

Bea is Beauty and uses the air element. Bea is unique out of the sisters as her mother was also a Grimm, therefore she knows about Everwhere in the real world and hasn’t forgotten. Bea has also been primed by her mother to “turn dark” and join Wilhelm Grimm. This to me made her the most interesting character because we see how conflicted she is about her true self and living up to both her parents wishes.

The Big Bad in this story is Grimm. I don’t fully understand him as a character or what his motivations are, but I think that was the point. He’s meant to be the personification of evil and not one person on their own is able to overcome that.

A lot of the story focused on the mundane lives of the four girls, so it can get quite slow. But the book is so focused on developing these characters that I didn’t really mind too much. I really enjoyed how we watched each of them interact with other people but also each other. As we know more about them than they do for most of the book – you feel anticipation when they come across each other on Earth in case something happens.

The book time jumps between the girl’s childhoods and current lives which can get a bit confusing. At first I believed the scenes in Everwhere were the girls at their current age, which wasn’t the case. Although once you get used to the switching it’s not too bad! It may also read better in a physical book as I was reading on a Kindle.

Positives of The Sisters Grimm
Character depth
Unique retelling
Negatives of The Sisters Grimm
Slow pacing

Sadly this wasn't the book for me. I liked the story overall and did like the sisters but the pacing and the writing were not for me. Also, the timeline was hard to follow.

Formatting issues with this copy made it very difficult for me to read this so I have put it down for now. Will pick up a finished copy at some point to finish it off