Ever since I got a kindle for my birthday, I’ve gotten back into the swing of reading. For a pretty long period, I had continued purchasing books, but stopped reading … which was horrible for my wallet, but pretty good for my bookshelf.
With the kindle, I’ve discovered some free books that I’ve never heard of, so I decided that for the benefit of updating this blog and also just to write more than I do now, that I should get into the swing of writing some book reviews! Yay! I wouldn’t mind delving into writing other reviews on tv shows and movies either (because I spend a lot of my free time just watching things) so maybe that’s something I’ll look into if I’m stuck on things to update on this blog.
But alas, let’s move on!
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Title: UnEnchanted (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale #1)
Author: Chanda Hahn
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Shelf: Read-in-2012, Children-Fiction, 3-out-of-5, Fairytale-Retelling, Romance, Fantasy
Synopsis:
“Mina Grime is unlucky, unpopular and uncoordinated, that is until she saves her crush’s life on a field trip, changing her High School status from loser to hero overnight. But with her newfound fame brings misfortune as an old family curse come to light. For Mina is descended from the Brothers Grimm and has inherited all of their unfinished fairy tale business. Which includes trying to outwit a powerful Story from making her its next fairytale victim.
To break the fairy tale curse on her family and stop these deadly events, Mina must finish the tales until the very Grimm end.” (Taken from Goodreads)
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Most people probably don’t know this, but I am a sucker for fairytale rewrites. Anything with even a smidgen of a fairytale or fantasy element will be added to my ‘to-be-read’ list. When I was looking for books I could put onto my Kindle from Amazon.com, the first thing I looked for was ‘fantasy’. I love being immersed in a whole new world built by the author, which they’re willing to share with their readers. And this was why UnEnchanted caught my eye.
The title says a lot for itself. Mina, the protagonist of the story, is basically a walking diaster, and she doesn’t know why. She keeps a diary of all her mishaps in hopes to discover a pattern of why she’s such a walking diaster. Her mum encourages her to stay away from sports and other extra-curriculars that would bring attention to herself, and she is all too willing to oblige – which I do find odd, but I guess Mina is naive and doesn’t find it weird that her mum never really wants her to succeed.
The story starts off where Mina manages to save her crush from falling to his death. This basically propels her right into the limelight, which scares the heck out of her mum who basically wants to pack up their life and leave town ASAP. Mina actually confronts her mum and her whole family secret is revealed … and so the plot thickens.
I found UnEnchanted to have been a very nice and easy read. At times, Mina really annoyed me with her infatuation with Brody (her crush) but it was cute when I remembered that she was only like 15. Can’t fault a teenager for being a teen after all. But I would have liked less romance, and more plot. I think the concept of being cursed to finish all the Grimm fairytales have so, SO much potential, and Hahn didn’t really execute it all that well. UnEnchanted only touched on two fairytales … and there are at least 100+, if I remember correctly. This just goes to show how un-plot driven the actual story was. I guess for a book that was only 181 pages long, that could be forgiven. There wasn’t all that much space to build on a lot of the story, so hopefully the sequel will do a better job on that, and focus less on the romance.
The one thing I didn’t like about the book was the character Jared. Seriously … what was the point of him but to hint upon a potential love-triangle, and maybe to appear randomly to save Mina’s life once and then to sulk around for the rest of the story. Supposedly he was meant to ‘help’ the Grimm descendants … but only if he felt like it. And by felt like it, I mean only if Jared thinks that they’re worth his time. How very thoughtful of him.
The character that I loved most was Mina’s brother Charlie, and this kid can’t talk. I guess actions do speak louder than words. He doesn’t appear in many scenes, but his personality is adorable. However, I can’t help but think that his scenes don’t really push the plot forward at all, so I’m not quite sure why they’ve been included, especially in a 181 page book which needs all the space it can get to actually talk about the story itself.
But all in all, I did really enjoy it, and it was a very good read. I would definitely check out the sequel and if you’re looking for a light read on Kindle for free, then you might enjoy this book too.
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