About the book…
An enticing contemporary retelling of the classic story of Snow White. While the the handsome prince, the jealous queen, the beautiful girl and of course the poison all appear, Sarah Pinborough’s charming and provocative spin on the story will captivate fans of the fairy tale all over again.
The first of three brand-new retellings of classic fairy tales by Sarah Pinborough, ‘Poison’ was first published in 2013, followed by ‘Charm’, based on Cinderella and finally, ‘Beauty’, based on, you guessed it, Sleeping Beauty.
These are three gorgeous little books, definitely not the kind to be read to your children before bed, rather, indulged in at leisure with no interruptions.
”If you are going to be cruel, then admit it. Embrace it. Anything else was just self-delusion and weakness.”
I am completely fascinated by, and always ready for, a revamping, a retelling, a gender flipping of classic tales as there is always a new way of spinning a tale to be fresh and new for each successive generation.
Societal tropes, such as gender flipping, returning agency to those without them in the original stories or making them less Disney-fied, more real, a la ‘Wicked’, will always find something to say about the human condition. And as Sarah Pinborough has shown in her Y.A and adult novels, she is a connoisseur of the observation of human behaviour. as well as the underlying motivations for them.
Here, Snow White is unashamedly open about what she wants and how she intends to get it, she is a foil for her wicked step mother in so many ways rather than just being , her very existence has always been seen as a barrier to her stpe-mother’s ambitions in a completely passive way. But here, she is named Lillith (the original pre-Eve woman from the Bible, seen as a she-devil because she would not behave as she should have.)
She is taken beyond the cookie cutter bad step-mother role as much as Snow White (who goes skinny dipping with the dwarves, gets drunk, has sex with a couple of notable male characters etc.’ She is much more a rounded woman not the passive recipient of male attention, desire, and usefulness as a bride.
Just because the book is not long does not mean it isn’t interesting, and with a writer like Sarah at the helm, plus allusions to other fairytales, these three might be the opening salvo in a longer running series, (fingers crossed!)
About the author…
Sarah Pinborough is the NYT bestselling and Sunday Times #1 Bestselling author of ‘‘Behind Her Eyes’‘ which has sold in over 25 territories thus far and was shown as a six part drama on Netflix in 2020 and the Sunday Times Bestseller, ‘‘Cross Her Part’‘.
She has also written books across a variety of genres including the YA thriller ’13 Minutes’ (in development with Netflix). Her next novel ‘‘Dead To Her’‘ came out from William Morrow in the US in February 2020, and HarperFiction in the UK in August 2020. It is already in development for US television.
Links-http://www.sarahpinborough.com/
Twitter @TitanBooks @sarahpinborough
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I love this series!
Would you recommended picking the other two up? I read some really slamming reviews on GR and have the impression I was reading a completely different book!
I had the same experience with The Justice of Kings earlier this week, except the other way around, I was all meh while everyone’s raving about it 🙈 I think these are not for everyone and if you go in expecting something like Behind Her Eyes or some kind of meek fairy-tale retelling, you’ll get burned for sure but you enjoyed Poison so yeah, I think you’ll enjoy the others too. I rated them all four stars.
amazing! It’s horses for courses isn’t it, like ‘A Lesson In Vengeance’, I thought very much one way but the reviews were very inflammatory but my lack of lived experience in some respects is one thing, not being what you wanted it to be is another! We read so much that not everything will gel but that’s ok, it will be a treasure to another person 🙂
That’s why I always stress that it’s probably me, not the book. (Unless of course the book is actually badly written and has typos or grammatical issues.) I can have a negative opinion and a need to vent it but still not want to discourage other people from giving it a try themselves.
100% agree, it is so important to pop a disclaimer in cos I genuinely avoid reviews until I posted mine, and then see what other people thought because you get some pretty decent thoughts going about various things
It’s fascinating, I sometimes read a review of a book I’ve read and think: that is such a fair point but not at all how I experienced it, or someone might point something out I didn’t notice at all, or I’d have this niggle and another reviewer didn’t notice that. Sometimes it does really seem like we all read different books when we talk about the same book. Sometimes I even think that I’m reading a different book when I reread a book or give a book another go, so much depends on mood and circumstances.