Monday, January 4, 2021

'A Little Fairy Dust' by Mell Eight

 


4 stars

Blurb:

"Nine tales of magic, love, and a little fairy dust: A military posting at the Rapunzel Tower to avoid war in The Tower; a Brownie that just wants to do something right in Cleanly Wrong; a dream of love unfulfilled in A Heart’s Dream; saving the victims of an evil witch in The Red Apple Witch; a boy who just wants to go to the ball in Cinder-Elle; a cursed kingdom and search for lost love in The Curse; a thief and his fairy godparent with different ideas about love in Happily Ever After; a lightning strike, a lost egg, an ancient battle, and love at first spark in Thunderbird; and a prince trapped, knowing his true love will never save him in The Beast."


Review:

This collection of 9 short stories feature fairy tale re-tellings with LGBTQIA+ representation.  There are 3 Cinderella re-tellings, a Rapunzel re-imagining, and some other tales for which I was not familiar with the source material.  

'A Heart's Dream,' 'The Red Apple Witch' and 'Cinder-Elle' were my absolute favorites in this collection.  Three other stories were set in the same universe and some of the characters in the first story appear in the other two, which was nice to see.

'A Heart's Dream' - Shape-shifting includes gender shifting and a gender-fluid MC.

'The Red Apple Witch' - The plot is genius, back story is so creative.  I wish this was a full-length novel, to explore the three main characters further.

'Cinder-Elle' - This story was very carefully thought out, especially its plot twists.  This made me feel sorrow, as usual for Cinderella tales, but this was very well-done.


#ALittleFairyDust #NetGalley - I voluntarily read a Review Copy of this book. All opinions stated are solely my own and no one else’s.