Thursday, January 27, 2011

Review: Entwined

Entwined by Heather Dixon

publisher:
Greenwillow Books

release date: March 29th, 2011


hardcover, 480 pages


intended audience: Young adult


source: ARC from Around the World Tours


rating:


desctription:
Azalea is trapped. Just when she should feel that everything is before her . . . beautiful gowns, dashing suitors, balls filled with dancing . . . it's taken away. All of it.

The Keeper understands. He's trapped, too, held for centuries within the walls of the palace. And so he extends an invitation.

Every night, Azalea and her eleven sisters may step through the enchanted passage in their room to dance in his silver forest.

But there is a cost.

The Keeper likes to keep things.

Azalea may not realize how tangled she is in his web until it is too late.

Review: This one was a charmer. I love fairy tale retellings, whether they are modernized or told in the old style. This one was true to its fairy tale beginnings so we got all the lush ballrooms and beautiful flowing gowns, gentlemen and ladies with impeccable manners (some of them, at least!) and most of all in this story, the dancing. Dancing is everything to Azalea and her sisters. They dance when they are happy, they dance to lift their spirits, they dance to connect with their mother. It was interesting to try to picture all the dances, sometimes it comes through as enchanting, and sometimes it slowed the story a little.

While Entwined was a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, I also saw alot of parallels to Little Women when it came to the four eldest girls: the responsible and caring Azalea (like Meg), the fiery, temperamental Bramble (Jo), the very timid Clover (Beth), and the outspoken and always-thinking-of-the-future Delphinium (Amy). I loved how each of the twelve sisters had their own defined personalities, even though Azalea, Bramble, and Clover were the three we got to know best.

I loved the development of the relationship between the king and the girls. It starts out very rocky and both the girls and the king are dealing with grief in different ways. That puts them at complete odds in a way that is almost cruel to eachother. But soon the kings sets out to try to mend things with his daughters and there were parts of that that very nearly had me in tears because his efforts were so touching.

In all the magic and wonder and dancing in this, parts were genuinely creepy! Some of the scenes down in the hidden pavilion where the girls sneaked off to dance were frightening, with the eerie Keeper and his ghostly dancers.

The writing was very good, kept me wrapped up in the plot and only dipped a few times. One of my quirks with reading is when a description is used repetitively and I found that here: whenever the king was upset he would "suck in his cheeks" and he was upset quite a lot so this phase was on every few pages when the king was involved in the story. But again, that is just my own pet peeve.

All in all, this was a really enjoyable book! Definitely worth a read!

I was unable to find a website for this author---this may be updated in the future!

Pre-order Entwined at: AmazonBN.com BookDepository

9 comments :

  1. You make this one sound really good. I don't know the fairytale The Twelve Dancing Princesses which is good. I seem to enjoy fairytale retellings a lot more when I'm not too familiar with the original story. Else it bores me quickly.

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  2. I'll be posting my review up for this soon too but I agree with a lot of the things you said. Loved this one!

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  3. I love this cover! :) It's so elegant. Thanks for the great review. :) It's interesting that the author doesn't have a website... hmm.

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  4. I can't wait for this one. I love that you compare it to Little Women, which is one of my favorite classics. Sometimes I just need a fairy tale and this sounds like the perfect escape! Great review!

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  5. I've been curious about this one (mostly because I adore the cover) so I'm glad to hear that it's an enjoyable book! Thanks for the lovely review!

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  6. WOW, the cover looks GORGEOUS!! I SO wanna read that book! That was a wonderfully written review, thanks :D

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  7. 3 cupckaes in a half? This book was amazing! i loved it. Its pretty long but it was soo good. The cover is beauitful and i loved looking at it when i wasn't able to read it like in class. i definley think it deveres 4 stars it was very good but like she said it did dip sometimes not that it was boring but like hse said it repeated.

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