Book written by Jennifer Donnelly, published 2020.
Once upon a time, Snow White was led into the forest by the Evil Queen’s huntsman. His instructions were to kill the young princess and bring back her heart to the Queen. Well folks, that’s exactly what happened here. The huntsman carved out Sophie’s heart and left her body to rot in the Darkwood.
But Sophie is a not-so-easily-defeated princess. Thanks to a new clockwork heart, courtesy of the famed seven men, Sophie now has one option: She must overthrow her stepmother and take her rightful place as Queen of the Greenlands. But in order to do that, Sophie needs to reclaim her heart (clockwork doesn’t run forever, you know). Along the way, Sophie will have to harness the greatest power in the realm and use it to defeat an unexpected foe.
At this point, I’m comfortable saying that I’m really glad I read this book and that I’d highly recommend it for your TBR pile. As a general note, I really like Donnelly as an author. She has a special knack for creating twists to classic fairytales that I’ve never thought of before—and I’m kind of impressed by that because I read a crap-ton of fairytales, and I’ve seen many many things. Donnelly also has this talent for personifying abstract concepts in realistic ways. I won’t give away any spoilers here, but I will say that her personifications make it seem believable that some of these things may seemingly have control over your life, but ultimately you are in control of yourself, and there is tremendous power in that. She excels at the whole point of a fairytale.
As for this particular story itself, I would describe it as clever. It has that satisfying air about it where all of the pieces just click into place at the end. I also just really admire Sophie as a character. Her progression from princess to queen/girl to woman is very clear and well-written, and no part of that journey felt rushed. Sophie is a classically feminine lead that I would rally behind any day.
This book is really clean. No gory violence, no sex or other steamy intimacy, and I think there was only one swear word in the whole thing. That being said, this is definitely still a young adult novel, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone under thirteen.
Beware! Spoiled apples sold from this point on! Proceed with caution.
"People need to follow their hearts, or they die long before the thing stops beating."
Okay, I have to say this first, just to get it off my chest: Haakon totally Hans-ed me. It was just like watching Frozen for the first time. I went into it thinking, “Hans is a nice enough guy. Not really right for Anna, but a decent fellow.” And when Anna came to him dying of a frozen heart, I was convinced that their kiss just wouldn’t work because Anna realized that maybe she liked Kristoff more. BUT NO! Hans turned out to be a total jerk, and I never saw it coming. It was the exact same with Haakon—I never saw his betrayal coming. It made me mad but in a good way. Okay, I’m done.
I really appreciated that the real villain of the story was fear. It made for a profound message that even though we may be told awful things about ourselves, we don’t have to believe them. We have the power to fight our fear back with love and believe something different. It was a really nice Disney sort of moral to include in a story that doesn’t exactly look through rose-colored glasses. It’s a lesson I think we all need to be reminded of from time to time (or I definitely do, at least).
I do have a couple of minor quibbles plot-wise: I’m not sure what the point was of Johann forgetting to put an emotion regulator thing in Sophie’s mechanical heart. Her overly exaggerated emotions only seemed to last for a couple of chapters, and then they never came up again. I’m not sure if that was meant to show Sophie’s true feelings or if we were meant to recognize just how much she limits herself. Either way, it wasn’t very clear, so it came across as unnecessary to me.
I’m also unsure about the whole coffin thing. Snow White gets a glass coffin because the dwarves couldn’t stand the idea of burying her and that’s how the prince finds her. Well, it starts out that way for Sophie. The seven brothers don’t want to bury her, so they make her a quartz coffin, and then I was expecting that this would be an opportunity for Sophie and Will’s romance to really flourish. Like he’d sneak her a kiss goodbye, she’d wake up, and the two would go off to Nimmermehr together to get her heart back. Instead, Will goes off on his own, a small child trips, cracks his head into Sophie’s coffin, collapses the whole thing, and that dislodges the apple caught in her throat. It’s not a terrible sequence of events, but it struck me as a little implausible. I understand and respect the importance of Will and Sophie going to Nimmermehr separately. If Sophie had gone in with Will, she wouldn’t have grown into her own hero, and her character development wouldn’t have been as strong. But Tom trips into the coffin and that’s what wakes Sophie from her sleep? That felt a little out there in the context of the rest of the story.
So I may have a few issues, but I really enjoyed reading this one. There were so many strong quotes! It was hard to pick just one to add to this review! What’s your favorite quote from the book?
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