a_spindle_splintered epitome of incomprehensibility ...I wrote about this book by Alix E. Harrow in what_are_you_reading but my mind thought there was a separate blathe for it. So I'll paste the blathery bulk of my review here. ... Zinnia from our world has an incurable disease stemming from industrial pollution. No one with it has lived past 21. For years, she's been obsessed with the Sleeping Beauty story, even doing a degree in folklore. She's just graduated and is turning the fateful 21, so her best friend/on-and-off crush throws her a Sleeping Beauty-themed party...and then she disappears into a fairy-tale world. The novella (it's quite short) is something my brother recommended, with a bit of ambivalence. "I disagree with the author," he said. I looked at the book. "Isn't it a novel? How can you disagree with a novel?" "I mean, I disagree with the author's interpretation of Sleeping Beauty, that it's inherently anti-feminist... Although some versions, I would say, are..." and he goes on for several spoken paragraphs. Then, "But read this and see what you think of it." It was about 11 PM, but I started reading. And kept on. The book has momentum. It's tightly paced, probably owing to the editing as well as the writing. The downside to this is that I don't feel like I know the narrator that well: she can be snarky and often funny, she can be sentimental, but I'm not sure I grasp what makes her *her*. On the other hand, the fairy-world figures Primrose and Zellandine get a surprising amount of character development. So, I don't know. I didn't agree with my brother's assessment of the novel when he asked me about it again, before he went to bed: I don't think the writer hates or even disapproves of the fairy tale. Does she want to do something different with it? Yes, and why not?? But maybe it could be MORE different. The parts linking the "real world" Zinnia to Sleeping Beauty were eye-rollingly obvious sometimes, like the name of her disease having "rose" in its name, re: Briar Rose... And what about a charming character named Charm? Cheesy, right? Even as a joke. Even if you make it gay (but the unexpected part was who the girl Charm had a romance with). Now, I did polish it off in less than three hours, staying up late to see it to the end. 250530 ... e_o_i Also, I think this is a good candidate to be called "New Adult" because of the character's age and the author's writing style: simple, propulsive, but also appealing to college kids who've taken literature courses and might appreciate a couple of digs at (or tributes to) literary theory. 250530 ... e_o_i And, as I wrote on a tangent in childhood_film_theories... I would bet ACTUAL MONEY that the author wanted to namedrop the notorious Harry Potter fanfic My Immortal when she referred to her main character doing something "gothicly" but she couldn't because the editor thought the reference would be too obscure for Gen Z-ers. 250530 ... ovenbird I haven't read this book but I did read Starling House by the same author which was a bit of a twist on a Beauty and the Beast theme, and I quite enjoyed it. 250530 what's it to you? who go blather from