What a wonderful collection of retellings. Vibrant prose and great story telling.

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley for my honest review. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

Snow White Learns Witchcraft is a compilation of short stories and poems written by Theodora Goss. There's an introduction written by Jane Yolen, which is admittedly the whole reason this collection ended up on my radar in the first place (thank you for that).

This anthology is full of fractured fairy tales – my favorite sort of fairy tale. Included, you'll find new takes on stories originally written by Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Oscar Wilde. Yeah, it's quite the variety! And it's worth checking out.

“They are some of the most powerful narratives human beings have produced, about what we most want (beauty, home, bread) and fear (darkness, abandonment, being devoured), which is why they keep being retold and reconfigured.”

Snow White Learns Witchcraft has got to be one of the more vibrant anthologies I've read in recent times. But then again, I really do love twisted and unique takes on classic tales, so I rather expected to enjoy this book.

There's something so ethereal about Theodora Goss' writing, it works beautifully with the stories she hand-picked to handle here, and I couldn't get enough of it all. To put it into perspective – I got so wrapped up in reading these stories and poems that I forgot to take notes. Hence why I'm not reviewing each one separately. Hopefully, my reason why will be compelling enough.

Thanks to Mythic Delirium Books and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

I had been meaning to read anything by Theodora Goss for the longest time (The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter has been on my bookshelf for far too long.) Now, after reading Snow White Learns Witchcraft, I really need to read more by Goss. It was an amazing anthology that struck such deep emotion, whether through its poems or short stories.

The very first poem in the anthology, and also its namesake, set the tone instantly – Snow White Learns Witchcraft. In bringing back the term witchcraft to its origin — of wise women that were both revered for their ability to heal and help and feared for their refusal to fall in line — and pairing it with fairy tales of damsels in distress, Goss subverts the genre. There is no clearer warning about what to expect in the rest of the anthology than one of the ending stanzas of this first piece:

I’ll walk along the shore collecting shells,
read all the books I’ve never had the time for,
and study witchcraft. What should women do
when they grow old and useless? Become witches.
It’s the only role you get to write yourself.

The short stories that follow, along with additional poetry, all feel fresh and are enjoyable, and yes, I did cry at least once while reading the anthology (Conversations with the Sea Witch destroyed me.) The writing is superb, as is the pacing. That Goss is able to draw so much emotion with each short story (I mean, it’s only 224 pages long total with 31 short stories and poems) speaks to her abilities as an amazing writer. Not once did I feel as though a story was rushed, or that I was missing a piece of it. They felt complete and whole, just as they are, which is hard to do with shorts.

I know buying anthologies is always a bit of a gamble. You never know if it’s going to be full of goodies or duds. But please, let me tell you, Snow White Learns Witchcraft by Theodora Goss is an absolute hit and so worth taking a leap of faith on!

This book was not for me. I did not particularly like it and ended up DNFing it thus won't be able to provide a detailed review.

I received a digital ARC for the publisher via NetGalley

I love this collection! I’m a big fan of fairytale retelling last but usually don’t love poems. I particularly love when an author takes known fairytales and provides a twist that makes the story feel new again. Many of the stories will feel familiar to anyone who grew up with even the tame versions by Disney, but she also includes some that seemed more Eastern European influenced.

The result is a fascinating, heart-warming, and bone-chilling collection of stories of how women survive, and thrive, even in the most difficult of circumstances. Snow White Learns Witchcraft will leave you breathless. It is the result of a master applying her skills to material that she loves. It is a MUST read!

The short stories and retelling of many of the fairy tales I have grown up learning were really interesting and enjoyable. I did not realize that there would also be poetry involved throughout the book, which I admit, I have not been able to fully immerse myself into so that was a bit cumbersome to read. However, I really enjoyed the reimagination of "Snow White Learns Witchcraft", "Blanchefleur", "Seven Shoes", "The Other Thea", "Diamonds and Toads", and "The Nightingale and the Rose".

This compilation of poems and short stories inspired by fairy tales really grew on me. I especially loved some of the short stories. I didn't always know what tale they were based on, but in all of them there was an essence of mystery and fantasy.

Very interesting read. It was a different way of seeing Snow White. I've passed this story along to others.

This is a beautifully written collection of short stories and poems, not only inspired, but also composed of "fairy tales fractured, reinvented, re-imagined, retold" as Jane Yolen describes in her Introduction "A Welcome to the Coven."
Poetic, feminist and literary, the stories and poems are at times obscure, rich with symbols, and at times convey relatable women's experiences and feelings in a deeply touching way. It also discusses women's life experiences, and themes like women's love, desire, marriage, motherhood, artistic expression, freedom, aspirations. It's rich in themes deeply embedded in all its 'tales'.

My favorite stories were:

"Blanchefleur", with a beautiful quote about empathy.
"The Other Thea", about a witch and her passional shadow.
"The Bear's Daughter" about a girl who dreams of the south.
"Diamonds and Toads" about the interpretation of morality in fairy tales.
"The Princess and the Frog" with a nice twist on the outcome of the tale.
"Conversations with the Sea Witch" with the "old women sitting together in the sunshine".
and finally "The Nightingale and the Rose" that was so touching it made me cry.

I consider this book a modern classic. I read it slowly because its richness of themes and meanings requires time to absorb and think over. I'll probably reread this later on and also also check other books by this awesome author.

If you’re looking for fairytales (both old and new) told with old-world charm in a modern, feminist voice, this is the collection for you .I loved the woman in each of these stories – there’s so much power in them

.Thank you to NetGalley, Mythic Delirium Books and Theodora Goss for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Snow White Learns Witchcraft by Theodora Goss is a lovely collection of poems and short stories. The title drew me in, but the terrific writing kept me reading until the very end. I highly recommend this collection.

Review published in Dead Reckonings #25

Anyone who has read the original Grimms’ Fairy Tales knows that things don’t play out like they do in the Disney versions. Fairy tales are, indeed, grim, and characters do not always come to happy endings. Disney, for example, doesn’t show the evil queen being forced to dance to her death in hot iron shoes.

Theodora Goss read Hungarian legends as a girl and now teaches fairy tales to students at Boston University. In this collection, she re-imagines familiar stories and creates new ones, sometimes laying bare the truth of the classic tales, occasionally imbuing them with a feminist perspective. Even as the subjects of tales, women were often regarded as trophies for princes in the old legends. Goss demonstrates that things that seem magical in a fairy tale might not be so attractive in the cold light of reality.

These are stories and poems of love, greed, jealousy and revenge. Are there monsters? Certainly: trolls (not all of them evil), dragons, witches, wolves and other creatures of the night. There are also talking cats, bears and wolves. There’s even a dash of cannibalism in the poem about “The Ogress Queen,” who salivates as she speculates about what her husband’s illegitimate children might taste like with a glass of Riesling.
The title poem, which opens the collection, sets the tone. Snow White, now older and a mother, has avoided asking the famous question of the all-knowing mirror she inherited—a question that, when asked by an evil witch (her mother) many years earlier, unleashed a series of events that shaped the course of her life. Living with seven dwarves isn’t as romantic as it sounds, and her prince of a husband turned out to be worse than useless. Snow White never forgave him for how he punished the witch. It is a poem about empowerment—she shuns the jealousy that destroyed her mother, and now that her husband is dead she plans to become a witch, “the only role [old women] get to write yourself.”

The tales are set in places from the classic “land far away” to fictional eastern European kingdoms to Boston, and in times ranging from “once upon a time” to the 20th century to the Facebook era. Often the works in this collection break the fourth wall—several characters are aware that they are living in a fairy tale. In “Red as Blood and White as Bone,” a girl who was once part of a fairy tale grows up wanting to preserve them.
There are recurring elements, often in stories and poems that are grouped together. There’s a “rose” cycle, stories about witches and wolves, two different views of Rumpelstiltskin and three of Little Red Riding Hood (the woodsman is a kind of wolf, and maybe she is, too), as well as several poems about women who marry bears. There are toads in need of kissing and witches disguised as seemingly innocuous old women.
In several works, Goss extrapolates the lives of familiar characters. What was the rest of her life like for the little mermaid who gave up her voice for legs to dwell with mankind on dry land (“Conversations with the Sea Witch”)? How did Goldilocks turn out after her encounter with the three bears (“Goldilocks and the Bear”)?
The standout story in the collection, “Blanchefleur,” loosely inspired by the classic “The White Cat,” is about Ivan, the son of a mortal and a fairy who is treated like the village idiot after his mother dies and his devastated father ignores his upbringing. Ivan’s maternal aunt volunteers to apprentice him for three years; in fact, she lends him to three different individuals for one-year periods of servitude: an owl who helps compile an encyclopedia, a lizard who is a travel writer, and a pack of wolves who defend against marauding trolls. From each of these experiences, he gains valuable wisdom and, more importantly, talismans that will serve him during his adult years as his destiny is fulfilled.

Other noteworthy pieces include “The Other Thea”—in which a young woman discovers that she needs to retrieve her shadow, which her grandmother stole from her years earlier, or else she will fade away. To do so, she must travel to the Other Country and put into practice many of the things she learned at the School of Witchcraft—and “A Country Called Winter”—in which the protagonist, who emigrated from a mystical (and mythical) European country when she was young, embraces her status as an American citizen before learning that the past isn’t finished with her yet.

The stories don’t all have resolutions. “The Rose in Twelve Petals” retells “Sleeping Beauty,” even bringing in the perspectives of the fateful spinning wheel and the castle tower where everyone slept for a hundred years. What happened when they awakened? After revealing her preferred outcome, the narrator admits that she is still waiting to find out what will really transpire.

Purists might insist, as a voice does within this collection, “That is not how the story goes,” to which the narrator responds, “But that is how I prefer to tell it.” In these stories and poems, Goss demonstrates the power in telling one’s own story rather than having it told by someone else.

I loved this collection! I'm a big fan of fairytale retellings but I usually don't love poems. This one just hit it out of the park for me. I recently realized that I had been approved for a copy on Netgalley but never downloaded it so I decided to buy it since it still seemed like something I might like. I am so glad I did because I LOVED it! Some of my favorites were: "Thorn and Briars," "Blanchefleur," "Goldilocks and the Bear," "The Stepsister's Tale," "Seven Shoes," and "Diamonds and Toads" though it was really hard for me to not just bookmark all of the stories. Some were one page and some were a lot longer but I enjoyed every one. Some were serious with lessons while others were more whimsical. I definitely want to read more by this author.

I intend to review this on my bookstagram soon as well.

My Rating : 3.5

I was really excited to read this collection of stories based on few of my favorite fairytale stories of all time! This book is essentially a collection of aftermath stories/poems if you can call it that, and it was very intriguing! Some of the stories really dealt with a lot of emotional and political issues with the original fairy tales and how the characters are coping after the ending. Plus not to mention few of them were really dark ( Which I absolutely loved) My only disappointment was that some stories were too short to get a complete understanding and I wish the chapters were long. Other than that, this book was definitely something all fairy tale lovers should read!

Thank you Netgalley for the review copy. Detailed review will be up soon !

This collection of fairy-tale-inspired stories and poems is wonderfully structured. I know that's an odd way to start a review, but it's one of the elements that was most striking to me about the experience of reading Snow White Learns Witchcraft. The stories and poems included here are ordered so that most pieces feel like they flow from the previous, either turning around to give a startlingly different approach to the same fairy tale, or picking up on a symbol, story element, or theme, and telling a different story with that element. So you'll get several pieces about bears in a row, or roses, or snow, though they'll be very different from one another, or two Rumpelstiltskins or Sleeping Beauties, again very different. And it feels like it comes full circle, ending with the same fairy tale (Snow White) with which it begins.

There are a number of themes in Theodora Goss's writing that recur throughout the collection. These are fairy tales of self-determination, of storytelling, and of introspection. Many of the poems, like "Thumbelina" and "The Sensitive Woman" feel like they must be very personal, leading to the sense that you've been allowed inside the author's private world, but you can see the same authorial voice in even the strangest fantasies, and it all feels of a piece. I loved everything about this book, and purchased myself a print copy as soon as I had finished it so that I could have it on my shelves.

The feeling of Goss's writing itself doesn't differ significantly between the poems and the stories, so the collection is pretty cohesive. That said, the poems are more likely than the stories to feel like snapshots, extrapolations from one idea in a fairy tale, or explorations of a character's perspective, while the stories have fully developed narratives. I think that with the poems, it's probably helpful to come to them with a strong fairy tale background, since they don't stand alone from their source material as well as the stories do.

About half of the total pieces in this book are original to this collection. That said, the five longest stories that serve as the centerpieces of the book are, with only one exception, reprints. Two of them I'd read before, and I am pleased to report that they are just as good on a second reading.

"The Rose in Twelve Petals" is a Sleeping Beauty retelling with an unusual, melancholy, and ambiguous ending. It's told in twelve parts, following different characters, with the theme of roses recurring in each part. It's also alternate history, in low-key way that doesn't upstage the fairy tale.

"Blancefleur" borrows some of the appealing imagery from The White Cat (the castle of cultured felines, the title character), and a bit of its three-part quest structure, without feeling like an actual retelling. A miller's son with fairy ancestry is known as the village idiot until he is apprenticed to his aunt, the Lady of the Forest, who sends him to spend a year each under three very different teachers accompanied by his cousin, the talking white cate Blancefleur. I enjoyed it tremendously.

"Red as Blood and White as Bone" was the first re-read for me (you can read it online here), and it's an original fairy tale as far as I can tell (I fully acknowledge that I won't always recognize a retelling's source material). Set in a fictional European country as World War II looms, it's a dark story about a serving girl who takes in what she believes to be a princess in disguise and helps her to attend a royal ball. This one is ultimately all about stories and the passion to learn and preserve them, but it gets bloody and disillusioned along the way.

"The Other Thea" was the second re-read for me (it first appeared in The Starlit Wood). It's a contemporary story based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Shadow, and it's about an alum of a school for witches who returns to campus for help during a gap year. Since her grandmother's death, she's felt apathetic and depressed, and she's told that she will continue to fade away unless she can retrieve the shadow that her grandmother cut away from her as a child, a journey that takes her into the fae Other Country. Along the way, she has to learn to think for herself and use her skills as a witch... skills that manifest in the form of poetry. Miss Lavender's is a magic school I'd have loved to attend, the Other Country is both mysterious and modern, and there's another talking cat, so what's not to like?

And finally, "A Country Called Winter" is the only lengthy story that's original to this collection. It's another contemporary-set one, a Snow Queen retelling where the elements of the story and the roles of the characters are all jumbled up a bit. The theme of academia continues here, and it's also about growing up as an immigrant in America, separated from cultural roots. We also see Goss's ability to blend etherial magic into a real-world setting with a nation that is both a real country with politics and diplomacy and the actual magical source of winter itself in the world. This may have been my least favorite of the longer stories in the collection, but it still had plenty that made me happy, including a lost princess reveal and a mythic, etherial female Santa Claus figure.

I can't talk about all of the poems here, or even most, since there are so many, but I'll mention that my favorites (at least this time through) included, "Thorns and Briars," about keeping one's heart in a box, "Goldilocks and the Bear," a more straightforward, narrative retelling about the lifelong bond between a young thief and the bear cub who once helped her escape his family's home, and "The Nightingale and the Rose," a gorgeous take on Oscar Wilde's story of the same title. But I can imagine that different poems will stick out to me if I re-read this book at a different point in my life, just as the stories that were re-reads this time around struck me slightly differently than they first did.

It's very hard for a story collection to rank a full five stars from many reviewers (myself included) because inevitably some pieces will seem stronger than others, or appeal more to the individual reader. The miracle of this collection for me was that there wasn't a single dud. Every story and every poem feels like it has something precious to offer, be it intellectually, emotionally, or both. And Goss is a writer in whose hands I feel safe, not because she doesn't take the reader to dark places (she does), but because she leads you through them and out the other side richer for the experience.

Snow White Learns Witchcraft is a sumptuous collection of short stories and poems inspired by fairy tales. The author, Theodora Goss, has built a career on writing fairy tales that resonate with a modern audience. In this collection, Goss explores stories such as The White Cat, The Snow Queen, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood, among others, and turns those well-known stories inside out, making them entirely new and entirely her own, yet entirely recognizable.

Although I sometimes find anthology collections to be a mixed bag, I thoroughly enjoyed Snow White Learns Witchcraft. With thirty-one stories and poems to read, I found myself reading slowly and deliberately, savoring each tale. Each story is richly layered, and they stayed with me a long time after I finished reading them.

My favorite stories included "Blanchefleur," which is based on a French fairy tale called The White Cat. In "Blanchfleur," we meet a miller's son named Ivan who has a touch of destiny about him. We follow Ivan on a picaresque adventure where he learns all the skills he needs to be a hero. My favorite bit of that story was his apprenticeship with Professor Owl, for whom Ivan must transcribe entries into the magical Encyclopedia of All Knowledge. Ivan learns things he'd never learned in school and is imparted wisdom such as "It is a truth universally acknowledge that judging a beauty contest between three goddesses causes nothing but trouble." The humor of this story is gentle, and its ending is heartwarming, which makes it the perfect tale for me.

I also enjoyed "The Rose in Twelve Petals," an inventive retelling of Sleeping Beauty and one of Goss's first published stories; "Conversations with the Sea Witch", which examines the friendship between the Little Mermaid (now an old woman in this story) and the Sea Witch (who sacrificed as much as the Little Mermaid); and "A Country Called Winter," a modern retelling of The Snow Queen.

I've always loved Goss's poetry, particularly her collection Songs for Ophelia. Some of my favorite poems in this collection include "Mr. Fox;" "The Nightingale and the Rose," which was inspired by Oscar Wilde's poem and has a better ending; "The Ogress Queen," a deliciously dark poem inspired by the villainess of Sleeping Beauty; "Rose Child," a Thumbelina-inspired poem that gave me all the feels; and the Snow White poems that bookend this anthology, "Snow White Learns Witchcraft" and "Mirror, Mirror."

Readers who aren't familiar with the source material can still find plenty to love in Snow White Learns Witchcraft. You'll encounter three-dimensional characters struggling with finding love, a sense of purpose, and a place in this world. Goss is a lyrical and vivid prose stylist, which allows the reader to sink deeply into the author's unique fictional worlds.

Thank you to Netgalley and Mythic Delirium for providing an advance reader's copy. I enjoyed this collection so much, I had to purchase it in paperback as well.

A very excellent collection of stories with a playful mix of old traditional storylines and new technology/settings in a modern world.

Fantastic book. I have found a new favorite to and will read more from this author. This did well written and very entertaining.

Snow White Learns Witchcraft: Stories and Poems by Theodora Goss

3.75 stars

This anthology collection focuses on retellings through short stories and poetry (which I thought was a nice blended-medium form of storytelling and it was cohesive). Goss has a good mix of darker concepts, but tends to sway toward the more enchanting, whimsical, and fun side of retellings. I prefer dark retellings because I’m a glutton for punishment and like to cry, but these were so much fun. Goss is a fantastic poet who weaves fantasy, reality, and humanity into her poems. Her stories are fun and full of talking cats. She offers a different, but enjoyable take to the stories we are familiar with as well as ones that we aren’t.


Whimsical Writing Scale: 4

Since this is a collection, here are my thoughts and ratings on each story / poem:

Snow White Learns Witchcraft (poem)- 3 stars I liked this one well enough, but I wasn’t captured by it. I’ll be honest, at first, I thought I would not like this collection because of my lukewarm feelings towards its opening selection.

The Ogress Queen (poem)- 3 stars This is a darker take on Sleeping Beauty with the ogre being the wife of the king who rapes her as she sleeps. The Ogre Queen wants to eat her. It’s weird and definitely dark.

The Rose in Twelve Petals (short story)- 3.5 stars I really liked this one. The story is told through different points of view (it’s a Sleeping Beauty retelling) and one of my favorites was the Spinning Wheel. I liked how different of a story this one was, but I didn’t love it as I hoped to. Goss’s humor and social commentary really peaks out in this one.

Thorns and Briars (poem)- 4 stars This poem was wonderful. I thought it was an excellent representation of how women will let themselves become hardened but present themselves as doing the right thing to appease and impress people.

Rose Child (poem)- 2 stars I was not a fan of this one.

Thumbelina (poem)- 3 stars I liked this one, especially the ending lines.
“I would like to be small enough to hear the dawn breaking, the tulip opening, the sand as it shifts under each tide, the long dream of rocks.”

Blanchefleur (short story)- 3.5 stars This was a cute story about a boy who experiences great loss after his mother dies and how the town sees him as the village idiot. His aunt petitions for him to come on a quest and help those she knows in need in the magical realm. Blanchefleur is a talking cat who is his cousin and they go on many quests together.

Mr. Fox (poem)- 4 stars “How does on fall out of love with a thief who has already stolen one’s heart?” I really liked this poem.

What Her Mother Said (poem)- 3 stars I was so letdown because I loved the concept of this one so much that I wanted it to be longer as well as an actual story instead of a poem.

Snow, Blood, Fur (short story)- 4.5 stars I got my desire. This story follows the theme of the above poem and it was fantastic. It was a fantastic story steeped in darkness and cruelty.

The Red Shoes (poem)- 2.5 stars This was not a bad poem, but I wanted more from it. This is a common feeling towards most of the poems in this collection.

Girl, Wolf, Woods (poem)- 2 stars This one wasn’t bad, but I was not gripped by it.

Red as Blood and White as Bone (short story)- 5 stars This story was amazing. We follow a young girl who works in the kitchens of the palace as a lowly cook and her love of fairy tales. A woman comes to castle and the girl thinks she is a princess. A revenge story steeped with magic. I cried, I gasped, I loved it.

The Gold Spinner (poem)- 3 stars This was a decent poem, but after how good the last story was, I wasn’t feeling it.

Rumpelstiltskin (poem)- 4.25 stars This poem was fantastic. It follows two different halves who live different lives.

Goldilocks and the Bear (poem)- 5 stars I loved the concept of Goldilocks being a thief who is hidden by the young bear and they become friends. It was a beautiful form of storytelling for this story and it worked so well.

Sleeping with Bears (short story)- 3.5 stars This story was ridiculous, but funny. It follows a girl who is confused by the fact that her sister is marrying a bear.

The Stepsister’s Tale (poem)- 4 stars This poem is interesting because it talks about feet in the context of the stepsister being a foot doctor and how the stepsister did what she did to her own feet for her mother’s love.

The Clever Serving-Maid (poem)- 3 stars I would’ve liked more from this story because it felt like a rushed poem and I didn’t think the format helped the story.

Seven Shoes(poem)- 4 stars The witch says that you will get your desire when you have worn through seven pairs of shoes. Is this that story and I really liked the concept of it.

The Other Thea (short story)- 3.25 stars This one follows a witch who has it find her shadow in a different realm or else she will disappear. This one was a bit darker, but had a lot of whimsy infused into it. I loved the shadow concept, but I was very underwhelmed by it.

The Sensitive Woman (poem)- 3.25 stars I liked how raw and vulnerable this one felt.

The Bear’s Wife (poem)- 2 stars I was not a fan of this one.

The Bear’s Daughter (poem)- 3.5 stars I love the lyrical pattern of this one.

A Country Called Winter (short story)- 4.5 stars This one follows a grad student who is an immigrant from a foreign country. It is full of human drama and then it takes royal turn. It felt like a magic Princess Diaries and I loved that.

How to Make It Snow (poem)- 4 stars I liked this poem and the concept. It felt like it connected to the previous story.

Diamonds and Toads (poem)- 3.5 stars This follows a twist on why it’s not so bad to have toads coming out of your mouth, but how having diamonds coming can also be good.

The Princess and the Frog (poem)- 4 stars This one has a great twist and I loved that.

Conversations with the Sea Witch (short story)- 5 stars We follow The Little Mermaid as an old woman in her wheel chair. When she gave her song to the sea witch, she lost her legs and she could speak, but she didn’t know the language of humans. She and her husband (the prince) successfully built an empire and in her old age she feels death coming. Everyday she talks to the sea witch, but this conversation is different from the others. This conversation shows us what the sea witch’s biggest regret with her dead love is. This one got dark surprisingly quick.

The Nightingale and the Rose (poem)- 5 stars In this poem, we follow a nightingale who is a hopeless romantic and she wants to help a boy get a red rose for the professor’s daughter. This is a tale about sacrifice for the sake of love and the tragedy of when that sacrifice is not appreciated by anyone but the earth and its creator. I cried and I fell in love. This is the type of story that I love.

Mirror, Mirror (poem)- 3.5 stars I liked this one, but it wasn’t a favorite.

Overall, this is an excellent collection with a lot of fantastic stories and poems. I highly recommend it if you are looking for some more fairy tale retellings.


Plotastic Scale: 4

Cover Thoughts: I adore this cover. It’s one of my absolute favorites. I have an adoring heart for it.

Thank you, Netgalley and Mythic Delirium Books, for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This collection of poetry and prose is pure magic.

I’ve been a fan of Theodora Goss’ work for years, and I was extremely grateful to be able to read this collection. Other fans of Goss’ work might recognize a couple of the works in this collection, and they’re just as lovely the second time around.

I adored how the various stories and poems were interconnected in this collection, with several of the stories referencing others in the book.

If you’re looking for fairytales (both old and new) told with old-world charm in a modern, feminist voice, this is the collection for you.