Review copy provided by the publisher.
Zinnia Gray is back in this sequel to A Spindle Splintered. It’s a sequel that leans hard on the knowledge of character and situation from the first novella–which is still in print and, hey, a novella, so no reason not to read it first. Zinnia is still world-hopping. Still helping other Sleeping Beauties into the best possible version of their story, the best she can. It’s getting a little old, all the happily ever. She’s getting a little tired. But it beats going home to her loving family, to her best friends, to the chronic illness that is slowly killing her no matter what heroics she learns or improvises in other fairy tale landscapes.
Until she gets pulled sideways into a different story. With Zinnia’s understanding of fairy tales, she has the sinking feeling that she knows exactly who the hot older lady with the apple and the mirror is, and why, exactly, she should not be underestimated. There are just as many worlds of Snow White as there are of Sleeping Beauty, and some of them are just exactly as messed up–and Zinnia has to figure out how to get herself out of there, fast, because things are getting weird in world-spanning ways, and there are sure a lot of people willing to cut other people’s hearts out in this story.
Not all of them figuratively.
Zinnia continues to be winning, fierce, and realistically scared about her own reality, and it was lovely to see her getting a chance to break the mold she’d made for herself–and for other people too.