A Wicked Thing by Rhiannon Thomas {review}

A Wicked Thing
by Rhiannon Thomas
♦publisher: HarperTeen
♦release date: February 24th, 2015
♦hardcover, 352 pages
♦intended audience: Young adult
♦series: A Wicked Thing, book 1
♦source: from publisher for honest review

One hundred years after falling asleep, Princess Aurora wakes up to the kiss of a handsome prince and a broken kingdom that has been dreaming of her return. All the books say that she should be living happily ever after. But as Aurora understands all too well, the truth is nothing like the fairy tale.

Her family is long dead. Her "true love" is a kind stranger. And her whole life has been planned out by political foes while she slept.

As Aurora struggles to make sense of her new world, she begins to fear that the curse has left its mark on her, a fiery and dangerous thing that might be as wicked as the witch who once ensnared her. With her wedding day drawing near, Aurora must make the ultimate decision on how to save her kingdom: marry the prince or run.

Review: I went into this book knowing it was a Sleeping Beauty story, nothing really beyond that.  I was immediately intrigued with the grim twist on the classic: what if Sleeping Beauty was awoken not months or a year after falling under the curse, but one hundred years?  Aurora wakes to find her family long dead and a whole new world around her. While I loved the idea, I couldn’t help but think this would have been fun to take this even further into the future, where she really would have been immersed in a changed world—the 20s maybe, or the 40s WW2 era?  Still, this was a good story. 

The prince that wakes Aurora belongs to the new royal family of her homeland, and they are not good people:  a cruel king, willing to take desperate measures to keep hold of a kingdom on the verge of rebellion, and his cold and conniving wife.  The prince seemed a bit clueless at first, but you soon find out that he has a good heart, is a loving big brother, but he's a bit spineless when it comes to his parents. 

While at first I feared not a love triangle, but actually a love square (?) with Aurora softening to the Prince, meeting a handsome rebel in the town when she sneaks out, and having some flirtatious tension with a prince from a neighboring land,  there sort of turned out to be not much in the way of romance at all---which, actually I was fine with. After an attack on the castle, she is holed up in her room, and really not a lot happens for a while, leaving the story dragging a bit.  Aurora just seem to be floating along, torn between who she wants to be and what is expected of her as the legendary Sleeping Beauty.  She's powerless to make any change or any decisions, but she doesn't seem to do much to fight for it either. It was hard to know who to root for and I felt a disconnect from the story.  

I pressed on, though, and I’m glad I did!  The ending pulled me back in. We finally see Aurora open her eyes to her own secrets, the kingdom’s secrets, and she grabs the opportunity to make a stand for herself. It’s left on a bit of a cliffhanger, but with a few important and unexpected twists at the end, I’m definitely drawn in enough to pick up the second book! 

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