The Fractured Fables continue in this fantastic novella. Zinnia, the protagonist from A Spindle Splintered, is back. She has been traveling through the fairy tale multiverse of Sleeping Beauty saving princesses—really helping them save themselves. This time, she’s pulled into a different universe by a Wicked Queen who doesn’t like the end of her story. And she wants Zinnia’s help to change it.

This book was magical, uplifting, funny, and all around fantastic. It’s a great follow-up to the first Fractured Fables story, but you don’t have to read that one to enjoy this. It was a quick read, and I highly recommend it. It comes out June 14. Thank you to Tordotcom, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, and NetGalley for my copy.

After saving countless Sleeping Beauties its time for Zinnia Gray to fall into a new story and just maybe finally find her own happy ending. Zinnia is tired of the same stories, of saving and helping the sleeping beauties all get their happily ever afters, she just wants something else. When trying to escape she finds herself pulled into a new story, the story of Sleeping Beauty except the person who pulled her in is the Evil Queen aka Eva. Eva wants to escape her fate, she’s fated to die every single time and she just wants it to end. Eva wants to find a way to escape her story and finally be freed, and the only person with the answer is Zinnia. But soon Zinnia and Eva find themselves falling into different Snow White stories and not all Snow Whites are kind an good and maybe Eva isn’t as evil as Zinnia believes. Zinnia and Eva will have to work together to navigate these new territories, and along the way find that they aren’t as different as they think and that they actually do understand one another... and maybe even fall in love with each other. I absolutely adored this continuation of the story, in fact I loved it even more than the first book. Eva and Zinnia are everything and I NEED A THIRD BOOK OF THEM PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE. I AM DESPERATE FOR MORE. Eva and Zinnia are two people trapped and constantly trying to outrun their fates, they want to survive, they want to find a way to just be happy outside of their designated fairytale story. I just adored this book.

*Thanks Netgalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Tordotcom for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

Book 24 of 2022 Thank you to @netgalley and @torbooks for the digital ARC to read in exchange for my honest review. Pub date: June 14, 2022 🤩📚💕
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Gaaaaawd I hope @alix.e.harrow isn't done with these. This is book two of a hopefully VERY LONG SERIES #pleaseandthankyouverymuch
Our protagonist from book one, Zinnia Gray, a kind of Sleeping Beauty for the modern day, falls through the fairy tale multiverse into the story of Snow White and falls for the...evil queen? The Wicked Witch of the East Bro?! (the fact that Harrow quotes my absolute favorite YouTube video of all time though 💀) But can she save her? And who really needs saving? As my friends, the original cast of Hamilton ask, "who lives, who dies, who tells your story?" Who writes the ending of the story of the evil queen and is she really evil or maybe just misunderstood?

Interestingly enough, I didn't realize this was the second book in a series until right up at the end! I think this is a testament to the author's ability to create complete characters, even without the benefit of a backstory.

I love absolutely everything Alix Harrow writes and this was no exception! Incredible character development, a great sense of humor, and a truly clever take on fairy tale tropes.

This was a good continuation of the Fractured Fables series. I'm a huge fan of Harrow's two novels, The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Once and Future Witches. Like a lot of novellas I feel like A Mirror Mended left me wanting a bit more. I felt the same about the first in the series, A Spindle Splintered. It was nice to get back to Zinnia's adventures and see her story progress further. I feel like there's an opening for continued volumes in this series and I look forward to picking them up in the future.

While the first book takes on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, A Mirror Mended takes on Snow White. Zinnia, whose discovery of the multiverse also lead her to a temporary reprieve from a childhood terminal illness, jumps five years into the future. Where she has been jumping and helping Sleeping Beauties remake their futures, but quite possibly messing up her own life and the fabric of the universe in the process.

When she is pulled through a mirror and into the Snow White ‘verse, she’s forced to confront her relationship with her best friend, her own mortality, and whether she can let herself have love.

I just love these lightning fast, creative, queer AF fairy tails. This one leans into the sapphic vibe even harder than the first, and packs a big punch in a short novella. I can’t get enough of Alix Harrow’s world building and creativity. I’m assuming there’s more coming…and I will be here for it.

Fantastic! I love looking through the glass at fairytales through a feminist lens. Of course Snow White’s stepmother was just trying to maintain power over herself- makes sense! And of course she would know the huntsman would never kill her. Never thought I’d like the Evil Queen- keep them coming Alix Harrow!

A Mirror Mended, Alix Harrow
Pub date: June 14/22

Alix has become an auto-read author for me. I simply love the immersive writing style of @alix.e.harrow which has included strong female characters, queer representation, challenges to gender role assumptions and societal expectations.

I have thoroughly enjoyed her feminist reimagining of Sleeping Beauty in A Spindle Splintered and was equally pleased with A Mirror Mended that pulls apart how we have come to see Snow White and Eva aka the evil queen.

I was absolutely smitten by these novels and truly hope Harrow reconsiders her decision to end the series and choses to tackle and upend another enchanted forest.

Thank you to the publisher and author for the opportunity to review this ARC.

Though I was super excited to read this one something came up irl about halfway through and I had to wait a few days to read the rest. This made for a strangely discordant reading experience and while there were plenty of great moments in the book, it didn't come back together in the way I was hoping for. So, don't be like me: Set some time aside because it's worth the investment.

I was disappointed in Spindle Splintered after reading the Ten Thousand Doors of January. I was worried that I wouldn't like anything in this series at all - but I'm glad I was mistaken. Mirror Mended brings me back to the appreciation I developed for Harrow in the first chapters of January,

I absolutely fell in love with Spindle Splintered when I first read it so when I was able to read Mirror Mended I was ecstatic. Harrow continues her theme of fairy tale imagery and pop culture humor that made me love her heroine in the first place. Those who loved the energy of the first in the fractured fable series will not be disappointed.

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for this eARC.

Back into the fairytale multiverse, but this time into a different story! If you liked the first one, you’ll like this one. I hope there’s one more, but can’t help wishing a bit that this was one longer stand-alone versus however many novellas. Still a very fun concept and a very fun main character.

A Mirror Mended is a fantastic follow up to Spindle Splintered and an amazing book in its own right. I love watching Zin struggle with her own actions and how they affect other people, vs how other people's actions affect her. Eva is amazing and the ending not perfect based on my own opinions but perfectly executed! It was awesome to see all the call backs to book 1 while it was still distinctly its own thing!

Zinnia Gray, ex-Sleeping Beauty and current fairy tale hero from A Spindle Splintered, is continuing to bash her way through fairy tale realities rescuing Sleeping Beauties trapped in narratives much like her own (at the expense of her own health and relationships) until she finds herself pulled for the first time into a different fairy tale, faced with a very different type of person in need of help - a villain.

I like how this series plays with fairy tales, and with the long tradition of retellings - from traditional, to gender swapped and grim-dark etc, etc. For someone who has always had fun reading these various takes on fairy tales, fiction that is self-aware of it's nature as a retelling is good fun. I also liked this book because the misunderstood baddie is a trope that tends to really work for me. And the Evil Queen is great - she knows who she is, and she doesn't compromise her sense of self even as she searches for a different narrative to follow.

One thing I liked less is Zinnia's self-centeredness where it came to her friendships, because it seemed out of character from the first book. To be fair, there is a small growth arc there in this story, though it was not as complete as I'd hoped. Charm barely features in it at all, and she was sorely missed. Perhaps in a future book that will be addressed.

In all, this is a solid second book in the Fractured Fables, and I will be looking forward to a third!

I realized part of the way through A Mirror Mended, Alix E. Harrow's follow-up to her 2021 A Spindle Splintered, that this was only sort of taking its inspiration from portal fantasy. Its true parentage, though? Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

A Mirror Mended doesn't map on to any of the films perfectly, but the spirit of a zany journey through the ages and universes is at the core of each one. And yes, Zinnia and Charm may be brighter than the delightfully dimwitted William and Theodore, but the stoner-esque colloquialisms and the adventure in search of utopia--whether a musical revolution or a folkloric happily ever after--occupy the same spiritual space.

Zinnia's happily ever seemed relatively assured in A Spindle Splintered, but now in A Mirror Mended we learn that all is not quite so well. Zinnia and Charm are not speaking for reasons Zinnia won't let herself get into, and she's replaced her best friend with a six-month binge on casual encounters of both the romantic and folkloric kind. Jaunting from universe to universe and cute hookup to cute hookup ends abruptly, though, when Zinnia is dragged into quite another kind of story.

The Sleeping Beauty archetype has always been Zinnia's home(s). But now she's come face-to-very-sexy-face with an Evil Queen from Snow White, and she doesn't quite know what to do next. Run? Fight? Make out? And it all gets even more complicated when another friend appears from outside the standard storyline--has Zinnia stumbled into a much larger problem in the story multiverse than one protagonist can fix? Whoa, dude.

Zinnia's insistence on calling people "dude" even unto moments of mortal peril can get a bit grating. But I will say that while it irritates me personally, it doesn't undercut the drama by much. There's still plenty of tension, and the escalation is textbook (in a good way) all the way up to the climax, which is suddenly and unexpectedly not textbook, not at all.

Harrow understands how to play into and also how to subvert conventions, and she does so beautifully in A Mirror Mended. The ending was extremely elegant. It was complete without being pat, and clever without being pedantic. Frankly, it was lovely. Zinnia has to face the music, but she still has options. Her emotional arc comes to a satisfying conclusion even as her life--not her story, but her life--goes on.

I know it's traditional for reviewers to use "I want more stories!" as a compliment, but please understand that I mean it as an equal—if opposite—compliment when I say that I don't want more. This is a good ending, a great one. It implies the continuation of a life that is no longer chained to Story, which is the whole point of both these books. To keep dragging Zinna back into the folkloric multiverse might be a decent franchise opportunity, but it would undermine both the world and the protagonist.

Well, okay. Maybe one more book.

I really enjoyed A Spindle Splintered last year, so I was so excited to get this ARC! The previous book was a Sleeping Beauty retelling, and this one follows a Snow White story but including the same protagonist from the first book. This is a fun, feminist take on the fairytale, however I didn’t connect with it as much as Spindle. I know this is intended to be a novella series but I think this one would’ve benefited from being a little bit more fleshed out.

A super quick novella that you can read standalone or part of the series. It's not a true retelling but it is scattered with bits of Snow White throughout, somewhat of a redemption arc, lots of rep and a reason to head towards the trolley no matter what happens bc that's how stories go.

This was such a fun and bingeable read. Loved book one and now book two as well. Can’t wait for the next one in this series.

I’ve been ecstatic since I saw the announcement of this book because I had assumed A Spindle Splintered was a standalone but I’m so glad this exists. And I just had to read it as soon as I got my arc because how can I wait.

Did I just forget how funny and snarky the first book was or did the author just take it all up a notch, I don’t know. But the main character Zinnia’s internal monologue as well as most of the things that come out of her mouth are very sassy and outright hilarious. She is ofcourse employing this tactic so that she doesn’t have to show her vulnerable side or face her own reality, but is prepared to dive into universe after universe to save different versions of princesses from their terrible fates, just so that she doesn’t have to face hers. But this time, she is in for something different.

When she comes face to face with the Evil Queen from a different fairytale, Snow White, she is not prepared for it - how do you help a woman who is also probably actively trying to torture you? Their interactions go from bitter to snarky to forced to honest, showing a growth in both their characters. Zinnia understands that she can find her happiness within her life without worrying about when it will end, and the Evil Queen learns that she doesn’t always have to make choices just to survive, she can also make them to live a life on her terms. We also get some little cameos which prove to be the necessary catalysts for our two characters’ growth; and we also get to see how the story of Snow White and the Evil Queen gets warped into different versions across realms, where the lines get blurred between heroine and villain, between good and evil. Add in some chaos across the multiverse, and it makes for an exciting romp of a novella.

Overall, it was a delight. I loved being back in this world and I liked this ending because it felt hopeful for everyone involved. If you are someone who likes fractured fairytales with lots of humor, sassy women and some very interesting feminist takes on the age old tales, do go for this series. While I couldn’t get access to the audiobook this time around, I’ll probably still recommend that format because I remember the narrator bringing a lot more personality to the story and just overall making the humor come alive.