Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exhange for an honest review.
"Malice" by Heather Walter was
a fresh, dark, addictive & creative fairy tale retelling.
The author did an amazing job of character development.
I loved this book and would definitely read another book by this author.

A dark, thorny, more malicious retelling of Sleeping Beauty. And a good one at that!

In fact, one of the things this book does well is twist conventional fairy tale arcs in compelling ways. That makes the characters fresh, complex; it keeps the plot itself dynamic in addition to giving a familiar story a brand new guise, a whole new perspective. Plus, there's a forbidden sapphic romance and what's not delicious about that?

Malice enchants readers with its wickedness by capitalizing on the ostracism and revulsion Alyce experiences on account of her "ugly, vicious" powers. Part human, part Vila, she is branded a "mongrel" and a "beast" because of her spidery green veins, as well as for her ability to curse, to kill with her tinctures, and is relegated to the shadows. A monster. A lonely outcast.

Shame has been her constant companion, keeping her hidden, obscure, from the other Graces; building her anger and hurt and resentment. Her biggest developments come when she learns to acknowledge her self-worth, when she demands better treatment for herself, and I couldn't help but cheer any time she wrested back power from those who had made it their life's mission to make her feel subpar.

Basically it was only a matter of time before she EXPLODED.

Over the course of the story, Alyce also comes into contact with Aurora, a princess who will die within the year unless she can break her curse with True Love's kiss. She is determined to find an alternate route, however. (No future prince or husband for her, thank you very much!) She wants to forge a new and better Briar, believing only the Dark Grace has the skillset to help her.

The two of them connect, an attraction forms, both Alyce and Aurora desperate to escape their respective cages. Their romance is not the stuff of instantaneous love lightning (thank the dragon's teeth!) and takes time, takes trust, to form. They're two unlikely people brought together by a similar purpose: a yearning to be free. A desire to be really, truly seen by somebody.

I couldn't help but root for them because of that. Longing to be understood by at least one person seems to be a rather universal human feeling, after all.

Good and evil exist on a spectrum in this book. Ruthlessness, compassion; villainy, heroism; sympathy, vengeance--they're all spokes on the same spinning wheel. Layered motivations are the standard here, which I prefer anyway, but I require them in order to champion characters who operate in the gray, and these ones certainly do.

All in all this was an inventive, entertaining character-driven fantasy. I'm delighted to know a sequel is already in the works, because I need more Vila-Shifter-Alyce wreaking love and havoc ASAP!

3.5 stars

*Review to be posted on my blog closer to publication

Thank you to Random House, Ballantine, and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review.

I really enjoyed this retelling of Sleeping Beauty and the different directions it took the story in. Learning about the different Graces and their powers was an interesting part of it along with Alyce's powers.

The hatred of Alyce and how others treated her throughout the book was terrible. I love how this book focused mainly on Alyce's story and her growth as a character. She's been pushed down so much throughout her entire life and tortured. Watching her figure out her worth throughout the novel and what transpires from her learning more and more about herself were some of the best parts of the novel. I also really liked the romance.

This is somewhat of a villain origin story and I'm all for that, especially that ending. I really enjoyed how dark this book got by the end and how it wasn't the predictable happily ever after. Not that I don't like those types of books, but I'm glad to see something different. Especially since this is a villain story. Cannot wait to read the second book to see what happens next with Alyce.

Overall, this was a great book that I'm so glad that I picked up. Thank you Netgalley for my ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

A very creative, and much darker, retelling of Sleeping Beauty. It was not what I was expecting, but I really enjoyed reading this. This story is mostly about Alyce, who is the villain in the story. She has some magical abilities for healing, which are an interesting touch. Alice is the underdog here - the downtrodden, mixed-race, friendless, invisible person in the background. Malice shows a great deal of character growth in the story. There is some romance in the story, but that is not what I expected either - one of may surprises for me. Enjoyed the read and now when I think of Sleeping Beauty I will have a different view.

Thanks to Random House Publishing - Ballantine through Netgalley for an advance copy.

Alyce is a Dark Grace. Actually the only Dark Grace. While the regular Graces have fairy magic and can make little tinctures to give people purple eyes, or make them witty, or other little perks for a limited time, Alyce's powers make items of the opposite effects. Warts, hiccups, and death (in special cases). The Graces are bound by law to serve in "houses" and do whatever their clients want of them. Alyce is highly sought after, being the only one, but she's also bullied and disliked by other Graces. However, one day, Alyce explores an old abandoned building and finds a mysterious chained man who claims he knew her mother, and that her powers could be used for so much more (and not just bad things). Have Alyce and the Vila (her half-blood heritage) been misunderstood and misrepresented by history?

Then there's a princess named Aurora who has to find her true love before her 21st birthday or she'll die, like her sisters died, because of some curse by some Vela long ago. Aurora is nice to Alyce and she kinda develops an instant crush (understandably).

So. What I liked about this book:
- The history was cool.
- The concept of the Graces was cool.
- Aurora was cool.
- The budding romance was pretty cute. (And not forced. Like... it felt more of a natural attachment, rather than 'let's get together because the author decided she wants an LGBTQ+ romance'.)

And yet, I did not finish it. I just couldn't stand it anymore. Why not?
- The Graces are basically slaves. I could not understand why this wasn't obvious.
- The people in the city were just oh so wealthy but it's unclear how this class structure was kept up. (With the poor residents outside the wall. And what about immigration? How does inheritance work? Lots of questions.)
- If Alyce spent so much time exploring outside the walls (gathering her own spell ingredients), how is it possible she NEVER explored that abandoned house before now???
- Most importantly... I HATED ALYCE

I felt sorry for Alyce, in her situation, how she'd been basically tortured and mistreated as a child, and how she had to deal with this bullying especially from this one particular Grace. I want things to turn out well for her, I really do.

But I couldn't stand reading about her.
- The girls are supposed to be 20 and above but they all (aside from Aurora, usually) act about 14, maybe 16 years old. They have stupid spats and I am not sure why Rose could devote so much attention to being mean to Alyce, without compromising her supposed character. So, that drove me nuts.
- Alyce is shunned and people look at her with horror. ...But why? She has lived here all her life and everyone knows what she can do. She's never done anything else. Why isn't she just... normal at this point? (Other than being the only one, of course.) Her physical difference seems to be only like she has green blood so her veins are colored green—how 'beastly' can this really make her look?
- And, if she's so bothered about people staring at her, why does she insist on taking her kestrel on her shoulder when she goes out? I would think it's easier to be anonymous without the bird.
- And, if she's so upset about people not talking to her, why does she completely ignore the poor carriage driver who is chatty (when she wears her mask)? She OFTEN seems proud and haughty, even as she dislikes others for those same traits, and in most situations is downtrodden and doesn't defend herself.
- AND, immediately after learning she has other powers, but experimenting only on weather and never on people (it's the SAME DAY FOR GOODNESS SAKE) she decides she can try healing someone instead of helping them to a painless death. IS she, in fact, a moron? NO! We know she's not! So why would she DO that? She didn't even seem to feel particularly bad about it....

These gripes kept me from enjoying the book, even though it has an interesting premise, and fairly strong writing.

In this twisted retelling of sleeping beauty, there are fae, shapeshifters, and more, with lgbtq+ representation. Aurora is the princess who is cursed by the vila, a race of dark fae, to die in a year if she does not find true loves kiss. Alyce is girl trapped and forced into a horrible situation because of her blood, being that she is half vila and reviled in Briar. I enjoyed this story and these characters so much. All the twists and changes from the original fairytale were very well thought out and there was so much care put into learning the story and background of this land. We learn so much as Alyce is learning stuff so there really wasn’t “info dumps”. I loved the writing style and was engaged from the beginning, and though it is a fairytale it didn’t feel too young. It was a wonderfully dark retelling.

Malice is part one of a retelling duology of Sleeping Beauty that shows what happened before the princess fell under the sleeping curse. To refresh the story the author not only shows how much of a gray area lies between “good” and “evil” but questions what a fairytale love really is by introducing characters from the LGBTQ+ community. I think people who really love fairytale retellings, especially twists to tell the villain’s side, will like this one.

My opinion: It did take me a bit to really feel like I had truly gotten into the story enough to care about the characters outside of what we “traditionally” know about them. The story does pick up to a decent pace as the characters move to having more meaningful conversations and development, which I was really happy with; however, I have a little bit of a love-hate relationship with the pacing at the end. While I think the book, storyline wise, ended at the perfect place, it felt like a long build up that ended kind of abruptly. I really did enjoy seeing a different take on Sleeping Beauty, especially what could have led up to the story we grew up with. I’m interested in seeing how part two really ties the stories together.

DNF at 62%

Malice is sleeping beauty with a twist. Alice finds herself mixed up in a world of Grace's, greed, and isolation with a promise of romance but I found the book slow paced that I was skimming while I read

I absolutely loved this. What a great twist on a classic fairytale. Alyce is such an amazing character. Walter creates this connection that you're on Alyce's side for the duration of the story. Alyce and Aurora would be the best power couple. My heart was so broken at the end of this. The ending was too good. There is definitely room to expand the story, but I didn't feel "left hanging." I definitely want to know how the story ends, but I don't feel like I'll die waiting for the second book- I'm just eagerly anticipating the release.



Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange for my honest opinion.

Fantasy

Creative, imaginative and just what you want in a twisted fairytale.

First things first: this is book 1 of a duology. It is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, but this first book is really focused on the events leading up to a Princess sleeping for a 100 years. We have a lot of political machinations going on in the kingdom of Briar. There are royals plotting against royals, humans plotting against the Fae, the Fae keeping watch to make sure that the humans are holding up their end of a bargain, Graces against other Graces and everyone it seems is against Alice.

Who are all these creatures? The Fae, are magical creatures, the Vila, are magical but evil, the Graces, women who are part Fae and part human and then there is Alice. She is called a dark Grace, but her blood is green not gold and she is half Vila. She is reviled by everyone, but people still pay her to make them "curses" they can give to their enemies. Alice's potions may make a dancer's feet falter, anything that has ill intent falls under her bailiwick. Her opposite are the Graces. There are several kinds of Graces - Beauty, Wisdom, Pleasure, etc and people purchase embellishments from them as well. The house she lives in makes money from all of their work, but Alice is treated horribly.

Looking for respite, Alice stumbles into some old ruins and discovers Kal. He has been imprisoned in the ruins and claims to be Vila like her. He befriends Alice and she keeps returning to the ruins and Kal where he shows her how to enhance her powers. During this time, Alice also becomes friendly with the Princess Aurora. Aurora is cursed and must find her true love by her 21st birthday or die. Aurora hopes that Alice can help her remove the curse. Aurora has no desire to marry anyone and has plans to change how Briar is ruled. While Alice is working with Kal and Aurora, she is contacted by the King and asked to curse various objects. She knows that the King is up to no good, but feels she has no choice. She is keeping every action she takes a secret from everyone but Kal because she feels he is the only one she can truly trust. She wants to trust Aurora and her growing feelings, but years of systemic abuse by the royal family keeps her cautious.

Just when it seems that Alice will find true happiness, everything implodes. Her own magic gets usurped and turned against her and those she cares about. This last third of the book is magnificent in it's story telling. All of the plotlines come together in a bloody glorious mess. The finale of this novel is grand and establishes the story for what looks to be an amazing 2nd book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for my ARC of this novel.

Malice is a dark retelling of a classic fairytale that instantly had me hooked at its premise. It’s an imaginative take with an intriguing world full of magic and deception, that has yet to be fully explored by this first novel. Not to mention the refreshing LGBTQ+ spin of a centuries old tale. The ending was riveting and bittersweet as now I will have to wait years for the sequel to come out. The one thing preventing a 5 star rating would be the lacking interaction between the main character and love interest. The development of romantic interest seemed a little left in the background, especially for a story centered around true love breaking curses.

I love books that re-write old fairy tales. This was another take on the Sleeping Beauty and a pretty good attempt, at that.
Alyce (Malyce to her sister Graces) is a Dark Grace, the only one of her kind. Her ancestors (the Vila) were charged with unleashing a curse on Briar's princesses. Each royal princess must find her true love before her 21st birthday or she will die. Queen are supposed to be the rulers of Briar but they have slowly, through the centuries, ceded power to their kings. When Alyce meets the Princess Aurora (Love how the names are the same as in the Disney film; actually LOTS of similarities, especially at the end.) Anyway, they meet, fall in love & Alyce is the one to break the curse. And then all kinds of hell breaks loose! The last chapter is SO worth it!
Very enjoyable read. I love how Alyce came into her power at the end. 3.5 stars.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this e-arc.*

This was a fun take on an old storyline. I love the affable "villian" Alyce. After a slow start things really picked up in the second half. I do wish that Aurora had been a little more fleshed out as a character but I guess we already know her pretty well.

I love a fairy tale retelling, now make it make it about the villain and make it queer and I'm hooked.

Malice is everything I'd hoped for when I first picked it up, and so much more. Alyce as the Dark Grace is so magnificent, and I really felt for her and everything she goes through. As an origin story, this book is amazing. If you're looking for a romance, it definitely gets off to a slow start and leaves something to be desired, at least in the first half. I do wish we'd gotten a little more romancin', because I was very drawn in by the princess and villain romance promise in the blurb.

I love the exploration of morality and the shades of grey that we live in that are the reality between the stark, bright, black and white concepts of "good" and "evil," or "light" and "dark." The history, the world building, the magical system... just wow. WOW. There are a few things that feel like plot holes, but there is a sequel so I'm hoping those will be tied up in the next book!

CONTENT WARNING: bullying, child abuse

Rounded to 4.5 stars.

I’ve heard a lot of great things about this, and it all makes sense now. I’m a sucker for a great retelling, a queer romance, and a villain backstory, and this book rolled all of those things into one amazing story.

Alyce is the Dark Grace, forced to use her powers in ways she doesn’t want to. She has no other options, she isn’t well-liked, and she doesn’t blend in with anyone around her on account of her unpleasant appearance. In addition, she’s grown up hated and ostracized. Monsters aren’t born, they’re made, and this book illustrated that perfectly. Even though Alyce is half-Vila and considered a monster, she has such a good heart and just longs to be treated like a person.

So when she meets Princess Aurora, she is shocked to make her first real friend. Of course there’s politics involved, because Aurora is a princess and Alyce works for the crown, and I knew that the story wasn’t going to have a happy ending. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and wondered exactly how much Alyce would manage to put up with before she completely snapped. She managed to put up with way more than anyone should have ever asked of her.

I didn’t even realize how many pages there were in this story, because they flew by. I just couldn’t put this book down, and was completely absorbed in what was going on. The entire world was richly imagined, as were the characters. It painted what is usually a drab fairy tale in vivid colors, and made it way more interesting than I’ve ever found it. I think her desire to connect with others made her susceptible to manipulation, and I knew that someone would betray her, but rather than being predictable, it just made me suspicious of everyone.

There’s a point in Malice that I had to look at myself in the mirror and realize as much as I wanted to enjoy a book almost seemingly explicitly curated for me, it’s just a lousy date situation. Any book pitched as ‘villains but sapphic’ sounded entertaining and freeing from publishing’s overwhelming expectation that women, and Queer people, fit into a place absent of messy behavior and character development. What I got, however, turned out to be more of a purely innocent and stereotypical story.

Inspired by the likes of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, Heather Walter’s gaze veers towards the twisted and sinister seduction of Maleficient. With Fae Courts and magical beings called The Graces, wishes are given by spilling blood in lieu of a wand. A human kingdom of both mortality and magic, gifts of the Fae but with the greed of mortals, Briar is a matriarchy gone wrong. The first warrior queen’s descendants granted their mortal husbands more power as the years passed. Transferring power led to more greed, militarism, and corruption in Briar. Aurora, the last daughter of the Briar Queen, must kiss her true love to break the curse, or she will die, and so will the last of the Briar queens.

Reviled and hated for her evil spells and her even more sinister heritage, she’s known as Alyce or by her nickname Malyce. Alice’s ancestors hail from Malterre, the land of Vila. A mysterious land of powerful but dark faerie beings.

Alyce spends her days conjuring dark magic for the nobility of Briar, unlike her graceful house companions and their wish fulfillments for beauty. She hopes for freedom, an escape from the abuse. With no mother of her own, the kingdom placed her in a home, one that demands Alyce pay for her place by performing dark magic for their customers. For Alyce, this place is bliss after the body experimentations and abuse she suffered at the hands of a vicious man trying to discover her otherly nature. Her hope for an escape looks more evident than before. And then Alyce meets Aurora.

Aurora is more of a political take-down-the-system kind of gay princess albeit blissfully ignorant about her privilege compared to raven-haired Alyce. Wanting a political fantasy of two gay girls is a dream of mine. Now, I have to talk about the part where it’s more a thin layer of ideas than an all-consuming world of complex politics, where issues like blood purity, strict class systems, and power feel more like something casually inserted.

Things like blood purity, class systems, and corrupt power involve very complicated histories from many societies, and they are such faceted and multi-layered subjects that include deep dives into history and politics. In this book, the assumption is that blood purity, and all the politics revolving around that is simply something to explain by the color of blood rather than something that people, like the English or Spanish, came up with to dominate and assert power over people. Some things in our world are invented and manipulated by corrupt systems of power, and Walter does some work but doesn’t go the whole way to build her world’s current political system with detail and nuance. In that regard, I found it a very old fashioned idea that does little to critique something built into our own world’s history.

When I see authors dealing with such heavy subjects, I need to visualize the work. In The Unbroken, C.L. Clark builds the prejudice-based politics in their world by showing me, largely through intricate and detailed character work, rather than inserting a very simplistic backstory. I don’t expect every book to be the same. An author giving me complicated issues and only giving broad sweeping stereotypical ideas but then focusing on other aspects of the story makes it difficult for me to enjoy that story. Nothing here feels oganic or seemless and so everything ends up clunky.

I want to have fun with romance and politics in the fantasy I read. I’m very interested in the politics of this world that I live and breathe in, and therefore I want to see that rally and that cry against corrupt systems with the same level of complexity. I need that sweet build-up in politics, in romance, in characterization. I can then feel the attention to detail and see such care for creating a sentence, a description, a character.

I want to sink into that world as if I can touch it and feel it, and hopefully cry about it.

A simmering chemistry-full romantic plotline did not develop as I had hoped. I wanted to love one relationship in the book, and I hoped for a slow, agonizing, and borderline ferocious sapphic romance between Aurora and Alyce. As a Queer reader, I’ve been desperate for publishing to boost adult sapphic fantasy with a bite. Malice sounded exactly like that, but obviously, it hasn’t worked out according to plan.

I could tell that Walter wanted me to feel the tension in her book, but the problem is that she did not put in the build to that possible tension. A lot of developmental gaps are apparent. There’s a difference between being told something and going through something where you are agonizing with them, the character chemistry so raw and real, wrung out so much that you’re screaming ‘just kiss!’

If it’s not the severe lack of moments between Aurora and Alyce, it’s the way the moments with each other never take time to pause, slow down, and reflect on the emotions between characters. The same also goes for any romantic moments. The prose itself is often crucial to creating tension. With prose so strikingly abrupt and awkward in its delivery, I found my interests were waning in the characters and their lackluster relationship.

What could have been some very smoldering tension between a villain and a princess started to look more like a cinderella story, almost not at all what I had expected. Alyce and Aurora feel very ‘the bully’s victim’ and ‘the princess that saves her’ rather than a sapphic villain fantasy. That turn of expectation, I suspect, does a lot to squish all the interesting bits of the story.

What’s more interesting is the survivor-hood of villains and their struggle with ethics. If I had gotten more characterization, I could see this working. There was such little done with the intimacy between me as a reader and Alyce’s intricacies that I couldn’t summon any interest for her or her relationship with Aurora.

The one thing that hurts most of all is that I didn’t feel any joy or interest in Malice.

A dark retelling of a classic fairy tale - wicked & vengeful. A villain to see the princess - not a prince. A shocking end that makes you say "WHAT?!?". #fairytale @heatherrwalter5 @NetGalley

I love fairy tale retellings and I thought this is a particularly great one. The story mainly parallels the story of sleeping beauty, but there are clear influences of other stories throughout the book. The setting and magic systems bring some wonderfully fresh details to the story. I was particularly impressed with the magic system and its history in the realm.

History plays an important part in the book illustrating how it is written by the victors and how important parts of the story can be lost to time. There was also great social commentary in the political system of the kingdom and its leaders. Additionally the characters were very well written and fleshed out. I greatly enjoyed the romance and the friendship that bloomed first. All around this is a great book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing for providing me an arc of this book in exchange for a review.

DNF at 20%

I'm disappointed to say that my first arc was a DNF. I really wanted to like this book. It sounded so interesting; a retelling where princess Aurora, the sleeping beauty, falls in love with the evil sorceress seemed like something I would love, especially since it's a sapphic romance. Sadly, I couldn't sit through this book any longer.

The pacing is so slow. It feels like it took ages for anything remotely interesting to happen. Now that I think about it, I don't think anything interesting has happened here so far.

The plot of "Malice" seemed intriguing, to say the least, but it wasn't. I was bored most of the time while I was reading this book. The pacing surely didn't help with this. I couldn't remember what was happening when I put this book down, which isn't a good sign.

I was so bored with this book that I decided to put it down for a while and read something else. After finishing that book, I decided to pick this one up again, and I realized while reading that this book was putting me in a reading slump. After realizing this, I decided it was time to DNF it.

The writing style isn't my favorite; it seemed to be very repetitive and, it also had a lot of info-dumping. There are many things in the book that could've been edited out for the reader's benefit.

The world-building was done very poorly. Again, there was a lot of info-dumping, but random pieces of information were constantly scattered and thrown into the book to (I guess) try to make sense of things; but to me, that just made me more confused.

I am sad that I won't be able to see the romance between Aurora and the main character, but entering a reading slump just to see the romance doesn't seem worth it.

Overall, I feel like "Malice" has a lot of potential, but it wasn't done right. Without all the info-dumps, this book could have definitely been a lot better.

Once again, thank you Netgalley and Random House Publishing for, providing me an arc of this book in exchange for a review!

I didn't know that I needed an LGBT retelling of Sleeping Beauty, but it turns I did. Plot holes aside, I really enjoyed this-though I may have some slight preferential bias towards the tales of Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent. And in the highest of my honors: I will read the sequel and that so rarely happens for me.

For Libraries: This is a great addition to not only your New Adult and fantasy collections, but it is also a nice LGBT romance.