I tried really hard to get into this book but it just wasn’t for me. I stopped at 25%. The cover and concept are killer though.

This book gave me the same feeling that the zombie Pride and Prejudice and I don't know.
It wasn't poorly written since I could rapidly fly through but I didn't care. I didn't care about the characters or the world and it didn't entertain me as I was hoping it would.
Probably somebody else will love it, who knows.

Unfortunately I DNF'd this one about 36% into the story. There was an immaturity about it that just didn't work for me. It's essentially the same story, but with vampires, zombies, and werelions. The main character and her infatuation with the guy with no heart had me frustrated because it was a constant conversation that she seemed to have with him.

I absolutely loved this book! Take a well known and loved fairy tale and give it a hard twist. What comes out is a wildly entertaining story that you can almost recognize. A great book for any age or genre loving reader.

I read this book a while back but life got away from me and I haven't had the chance to post about it yet! The Wizard of Oz is one of my all-time favorite stories and I love a good retelling so this was a no-brainer to pick up from Netgalley. An Oz filled with zombies, vampires, and b shifters? Yes, please! While there were aspects of this book that I found a bit juvenile, overall I enjoyed it and look forward to the rest of the series!

What I Loved: I love a good retelling of a fairy tale or story. I was really excited to read this and I enjoyed the idea of the story.

How I Felt: This book book was just a struggle for me overall. I did not appreciate any of the characters. I found Dorothy to be a repetitive mess and Nick was kind of a slime-ball. Any relationship they could have had in my mind was just rushed so much in the book that I did not connect with it. It needed to be slowed down and given some time.

The story seemed to go around in circles. I felt like we kept being told things we already knew or doing things that had already been done. I was not able to appreciate much about this book, unfortunately.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

2.5 stars. This is a bit of an awkward review because though overall it rates at a 2.5 star, there were things about this book that were absolutely 4 stars. Unfortunately, when I combine all of the aspects of the reading experience, some components just dragged down the rest.

I loved the premise. LOVED it. I'm a big fan of retellings and twisted and dark retellings particularly tickle my fancy. This is all sorts of messy and fun. I loved the fact that it kept the bones of the original Oz (the books, NOT the movie) in place. The narrative was imaginative in this way and just made it enjoyable to read. There were fantastic liberties taken with the original stories and I loved being placed in this familiar (yet totally turned on its head) world.

The writing style messed with me a little. It felt overly conflicted. Overall, it was good and there was a clear existence of talent. The sensory experiences were great and the interaction sequences were, for the most part, coherent and exciting. But...the dialogue was often awkward and Dorothy's particular tendency toward bathroom humor and defining swear words was a definite turn off. In addition, the writing itself was often lyrical and highly descriptive, but then would become overly complex with ten-dollar thesaurus words. I'm talking completely obscure words that I don't know if I've even ever heard before...and I consider myself fairly well read and educated. This kind of word choice felt out of place and really made it feel like there was a bit of trying too hard to impress the reader. I often got pulled out of the story by these events.

My other major issue with the book was that it could have used a bit of trimming. Sometimes authors don't seem to trust the reader to grasp pieces of the story or the development of relationships between the characters so there becomes a bit of laboring over the point. That happened a lot in this book. Things, particularly the plot developments between Dorothy and Nick, were often repeated and it felt like deja vu in some of the internal monologue and dialogue pieces. Had this been smoothed out, I would have enjoyed the book a lot more.

I'm very conflicted with this book to be honest. It's kind of like the old nursery rhyme about the little girl with the curl on her forehead -- when it was good, it was very, very good, but when it was bad...well, it was painful. So now comes the point where I have to decide whether or not to continue with the series. I want to know where the story goes because I really found the imaginative pieces so much fun. It was clever and Gevedon clearly has the ability to write a good scene and some interesting characters. However, I'm not sure I'm up to wading through another repetitive narrative and dealing with the potty humor. I'll probably give it a try since this was a debut novel and hope that the writing in the follow up shows developed maturity.

Many thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy. This did not affect my rating.

*1/5*

This book was a mess.. the cover is cool, but don't let that fool you!

Dorothy is meh. The story is meh and tedious. I went in expecting higher energy, better characters.. this is 400+ pages and I could definitely feel the slog.

What a great book! So different from your usual zombie book. I loved the premise, the reimagining of Oz and the characters! I highly recommend this book. It's hyped for a reason! Read it!

Interesting twist to the Wizard of Oz story. This incarnation of Dorothy has some personality. Upon her arrival to Oz, she learns that this world is full of evil vampires and other monsters. Her super cool silver boots turn her into a Slayer and as expected she and Toto pick up a rag-tag group of companions including a brain eating zombie scarecrow, a hunky heartless woodsman warrior, and a cowardly werelion. I like the idea of this but the pacing is off and the repetitive writing is a bit clunky.

I really like the Wizard of Oz and retellings of the story. This book tried really hard and there were parts I enjoyed. Archie the zombie and his friendship with Toto was super cute. They were hunting buddies and Archie treated Toto like a real friend and not a dog. There were also some funny parts, especially with miscommunications from Dorothy's world to Oz. I felt like this was slow and too long, it could have been much shorter and still gotten the point across. I also didn't love Dorothy or Nick. I think they're kind of toxic with each other and better off separate. There was a lot of explaining of things from Dorothy's world that got tedious and I really didn't need an paragraph on what a 'douche' is, ew.
I hope people enjoy it and maybe the sequel will have better pacing and show Dorothy and Nick as better people.

Dorothy in the Land of Monsters was a lackluster read to me. Nothing stood out and the characters weren't very memorable either. I can see why others may enjoy it, what with its somewhat unique twist on the original story, but this just was not for me. The cover, on the other hand, is absolutely beautiful!

Well the title and cover are super cute but the book itself did not keep my interest. I just didn't love the characters and I did find much development, I tried to like it though and did read it through.

"'Suppose we fail,’ Werelion squeaks out.
'Then I shall always be a zombie.'
'And I shall always be a coward.'
'And I shall always be a heartless killer of vampires either way,' says Nick."

I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publicists at Xpresso Book Tours. Trigger warnings: death, parent death, car accidents, grief, violence, gore, buckets of blood, threats, abduction, spiders, slavery, homophobic/ableist/sexist language, consent issues, some NSFW content.

When Dorothy and her dog, Toto, are swept up into a tornado, they’re dropped straight into a world of monsters. Oz is overrun with zombies, vampires, and shapeshifters, and if Dorothy ever wants to return to Kansas, she’s going to have to make it to the Emerald City alive. Helped along by her magical, butt-kicking boots and a few friends she meets along the way, Dorothy’s journey takes her through the many lands of Oz and up against a number of foes, not least of which is the Wicked Vampire Witch of the West.

If you read my reviews, you know that I can’t pass up an Oz or Peter Pan retelling, and sometimes that’s a thorn in my side because I’ve yet to read an Oz adaptation I couldn’t live without. I don’t like to give low ratings to small press or indie pub books, but I don’t see a way around this one. There’s a lot of potential in here for a good story, but Dorothy in the Land of Monsters is mightily in need of an editor–-perhaps two, because its issues are both structural and line-based.

On a structural level, it’s just too long. The book too closely follows the events of the original Wonderful Wizard of Oz (with its own monstrous spin on them), and it quickly grows tedious. At least two or three of the major confrontations could have been left out in favor of streamlining the plot. The narration is also extremely repetitive. Dorothy thinks many of the same things, in the same words, every few pages, and characters have what amounts to the same conversations several times (especially if she’s talking to Nick about their Feelings).

On a sentence level, the writing just isn’t great. The descriptions are wildly overdone. I’m fond of adjectives, but it’s more adjectives than even I would ever use, plus every synonym for red and yellow I’ve ever heard (and some I haven’t). I don’t often imagine writers sitting with a thesaurus open next to them, but it’s clear that’s what happened here. There are also basic mistakes that a good editor (or even a good beta reader) would have caught, such as characters’ names randomly appearing before they’ve introduced themselves and a character’s hair color changing from gold to dark and back again. Usually, I can overlook a handful of editing errors, but there were enough to be distracting.

The characters are average. Dorothy is a fairly standard heroine who falls victim to some tired YA tropes (not being like other girls, not realizing she’s drop dead gorgeous). Apparently, her boots make her act cockier than she really is, and she says a lot of insensitive things under their influence. They’re a constant strain on the story’s believability, so powerful that I never really believed that Dorothy was in any danger from the threats she faced. The romance plot is similarly packed with overdone tropes (he’s too attractive for me, mutual pining and denial), and it takes up more of the novel than it needs to.

In contrast, her other two companions don’t get nearly the same development. I did love Glinda, fabulous red-haired Rita Hayworth queen that she is, and I wished she’d gotten more page-time. I also like the twists Gevedon puts on the universe with plenty of zombies, vampires, and shapeshifters (though I did have Damon Salvatore in my head going, “I think the PC term is witchpire” every time someone said Vampire Witch), and there’s plenty of world-building on the magic system. All in all though, it’s entirely too much: too many descriptions, too many scenes, too much repetition. I struggled to finish, and I won’t be continuing with the series.

I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.

Three stars out of five.
I really wanted to like this more. I felt as though it was written “young” but at the same time the author took out a thesaurus anytime they could. Using words like Stygian and intumesence but then also using words like knob-gobbler left me just wishing for a little more cohesiveness. Overall entertaining but not the fabulous read I was hoping for.

This novel has so much potential. The synopsis is unique and nothing I've seen with Oz before. Even the monsters tie in perfectly with what each character is searching for. The downside is the dialogue and inner demons. Instead of keeping it short and sweet they drag on for pages creating an excruciatingly long back and forth banter that gets nowhere. Instead of being the badass heroine, Dorothy comes off as immature and whiny. I do believe this has the potential to go far but in its current state it was not a winner for me.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

As Wizard of Oz is one of my favourite childhood stories and I am a huge sucker for retellings, I was really looking forward to this one.
Sadly, I was left a bit dissappointed and am still searching for an Oz-retelling that will blow my mind.
While the author added some twists to the story, like zombies and vampires, the basic plotline staid the same, which made me skip some parts, as the reading experience was a bit predictable and boring in these parts.
Also, while some dialogues and Dorothy's thoughts were pretty modern and hilarious (f.e. why the hell is everyone bowing to her? Those people must be pretty much used to being oppressed in this country), other passages seemed to be a bit over the top and trying to hard.
I can't really put a finger onto what it is, but it's either I laughed at the writing hard or found it very cringy, there was nothing in between...

I guess that I am a bit too old for this one and not the target group anymore.
While I quite enjoyed some of the new aspects that the author added (f.e. the zombiism and thus finally the reason why one of the main characters of the story is so obsessed with brains!), the romance-aspect fell flat for me and lessened my enjoyment of the book immensly. I am also not quite sure, to be honest, if this book can be considered YA with such graphic language, but then also as the behaviour and dialogues are pretty teenager-ish and juvinile, I can't think of it being suitable for an adult audience...
So to sum it up, I feel like it is a bit of a mish mash that doesn't really know where it's going.
It's an ok book, but nothing I would reread.

I tried to like this book, but I just couldn’t. The premise was interesting and the cover looked like a lot of fun, so I had high hopes, but I just couldn’t get through it. The characters were hard to like. Dorothy was whiney and extremely repetitive. Nick was a little like a caricature and was borderline offensive when tricking Dorothy into kissing him. He just felt sleazy to me. Ardie was interesting. I found him to be the most intriguing, but it wasn’t worth wading through everything else. Every time I started reading more, I felt like it just kept repeating around in circles so that I never got anywhere. I wanted it to get better. I kept trying, hoping it would, but it just was a struggle to get anywhere. I do think this book has potential. It needs to be tightened up (please find a new way to talk about Kansas - is almost stopped reading after reading the word grey so many times) and the characters need to be more relatable. I also think any relationship between Nick and Dorothy should be much slower and a little more subtle. As it is, they do not seem at all realistic and there is nothing to make you root for them.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the copy to review in exchange for an honest opinion.

I have a issue with remakes..whether it be remakes with movies or novels. With saying so, I believe that the wizard of oz is one of those classics that shouldn’t be messed with. While the writing was great, I just didn’t enjoy the novel like I had hoped.

Very sweet! It keeps the magic alive! It's an interesting take on a classic. I think it would take some getting used to, but it's pretty cool.