Nine stories of magic, love and a little fairy dust: A military post at the Tower of Rapunzel to avoid war in The Tower; a Brownie who just wants to do something right in Cleanly Wrong; a dream of unfulfilled love in A Heart's Dream; saving the victims of an evil witch in The Red Apple Witch; a boy who just wants to go to the dance in Cinder-Elle; a cursed kingdom and seek lost love in The Curse; a thief and his fairy godmother with different ideas about love in Happily Ever After; a lightning bolt, a lost egg, an ancient battle, and love at first sight in Thunderbird; and a trapped prince, knowing that his true love will never save him in The Beast. Something I love is the retellings and this book brings 9 stories based on the classic fantasy stories. Each story has its touch of magic, which makes them special, at first they are a little confusing, since they tell us things as if we were familiar with the context, but from there on they are very good, the way they turn things around is amazing. I must admit that some of them were a bit boring, but I liked the scenery of each one of them. If you are a fan of fantasy and retellings, you will certainly like this book, although it has some scenes that are not suitable or to the liking of all, besides it has a great diversity of characters, with different characteristics from the usual ones, but I assure you that you will love this book.

I love fairy tale retellings and saw the premise of this one and was interested in it. Sadly, it was a bit of a letdown for me. There are nine tales in this collection dealing with many known fairy tales. Many of them combine multiple fairy tales into one story. I did like how she combined some of the fairy tales in the stories. A good example of this was "The Red Apple Witch", I liked the connections in this though I think this could have been expanded on a lot (which is a common trait with many of the stories in this collection).

Each of the stories felt too short for the story they were telling. It took me quite some time to get into each of them and then when I did they rushed to the end. I would have liked to see the stories expanded more and to get more time with the characters. This also made the relationships for the most part to feel too rushed. "The Tower" was a story that I enjoyed but it was too short. I would have enjoyed a full novel of this one. I did like how we got to see the characters from this one throughout some of the other stories. That made this collection feel connected. Also, the take on the Rapunzel story in this was really cool.

I did not like "Thunderbird" at all, especially the relationship in this one. It just felt out of nowhere and was strange. I also did not think that there needed to be a relationship in "Cleanly Wrong". This was another really rushed ending that did not go well with the story at all. It was not needed at all.

Out of the collection, my favorite was probably "Cinder-Elle". I liked the way this expanded the story of Cinderella and how we got to see the relationship between Elle and Theo more. This made me think a little bit about my favorite version of the Cinderella story Ella Enchanted where she spends a lot of time with the prince. First, as friends and then their relationship grows. I would have liked to see this story expanded along with a couple of others from the collection.

The other stories in the collection "A Heart's Dream", "The Curse", "Happily Ever After", and "The Beast," were all good stories.

Overall, this was a good collection where I enjoyed some of the stories like "Cinder-Elle", "The Tower" and "The Red Apple Witch".

*Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my ARC of this book. All opinions are my own. *

I loved the idea of reimagined fairytales with an lgbtq twist. The cover is pretty, the premise is promising, but I was overall a bit disappointed. I enjoyed the writing style, but for the length of each of the stories there was way too much focus on world-building and not enough on the stories themselves.

I would’ve loved to see one or two of these more developed or woven together, rather than so many short stories that felt a bit rushed and so separate. The tower was by far my favorite, if she ever chooses to expand on that one I would love to come back and read it!

Thank you to Mell Eight, NetGalley, and NineStar Press for sending me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Nine tales of magic, love, and a little fairy dust. This retelling of fairy tales collection is a fresh spin in the old stories. The author does an amazing job of making these characters and stories interesting and new without losing what we love about the stories

This is a compilation of short stories, these are retellings of famous fairytales. The stories have a twist with LGBTQ+ characters and most of these end with a happy ending, because they’re fairytales, but some don’t make a lot of sense. I was attracted to it because I love retellings and fairytales, but this ones weren’t great. I thought most of them were boring and I couldn’t connect with any of the characters.
Specially, the second story, “Cleanly Wrong”. I didn’t like it at all, for me it was very boring and slow. I didn’t connect with it. I would like to interpret it as a characterisation of OCD, the character was different, and even though everyone was supposed to do the same thing, cleaned differently and couldn’t be helped, I liked that aspect and how it shows that even though you’re different and you do things differently than you’re supposed to do them, to someone it will be very helpful and better than the “normal” way.
I wasn’t able to get to understand the characters and the story, they were all simple. When I started to get excited and interested, the story suddenly was too short, like the first one “The Tower”.
Overall, it was fine, it doesn’t stand out between all the retellings that already exist. I liked the representation, but that’s kind of it.

This book is a collection of eight short stories that put a creative (and usually LGBT+) spin on fairytales. As a lesbian browsing through the LGBTQIA section of Netgalley, I was initially intrigued by the premise and began reading it at once. Although the author’s style is good and some of the stories have potential, I have to say that I felt a bit let down by this book. This book was still entertaining, but it could be improved.

It was extremely difficult for me to get into each of the individual stories, so I felt that there needed to be a better hook for them, something to catch my attention and keep it there. It felt as though a lot of the stories started three or four pages in (the story I noticed this most in was Cleanly Wrong because I had a very difficult time getting invested in the characters until about halfway through). However, after the stories got me invested, I felt that they were too short. I think that if this author had fleshed out the stories—perhaps even turned one into a full-length novel (such as The Tower)—I would’ve taken a liking to them, but as it stands, there was little time and incentive for me to become invested in these characters’ stories. This is extremely detrimental to the plot (especially when it comes to the romances) because the conflicts and relationships had to be developed extremely quickly, so they either felt rushed or inconsequential. I think the primary issues some of the other stories have is that they somewhat rely on the audience already knowing the fairytales rather than building the world naturally.

However, there are aspects of this book that I liked. I felt like the story that really lived up to my expectations was Cinder-Elle, a twist on the Cinderella story. I liked how the plot was expanded and the interactions between Elle and the prince, and how there was time to get to know the characters and their predicaments.

Mell Eight has reimagined and rewritten ten fairy tales. Some of them very famous. A couple of them were new to me.
The book is OK. A little boring sometimes.