Adventures in Crafting with Words

This post is pulling double duty today. First up, An Inconvenient Princess.  The youngest and seventh child - Penny - meets Rapunzel.    Only,  unexpectedly, Penny has no magic - unlike her siblings.  It's expected that the seventh sibling have some sort of abilities, but Penny doesn't, and it disappoints everybody who encounters her. When Penny goes searching for her twin, Anneliese,  she literally finds herself in a tree.  With a tiger in a tree blocking her from climbing down, she calls on Mortimer to help get her somewhere safe.  Mortimer sends her to a tower where she meets Rapunzel.   Once they escape, sorta, Penny finds herself in the arms of Arthur. Arthur, you may recall from A Goose Girl.  He is Conrad's cousin and the younger prince. Chaos erupts as the trio begin searching for Anneliese.  Cases of mistaken identity - Penny IS Anneliese's almost identical twin.  Kidnapping.  And...

A Bear's Bride is Book Three in the Entwined Tales series features Sophie.  Any readers of the previous two books can deduce that she's a handful. We start off with her sneaking off to visit her friend, Peter.  The very friend she's been forbidden from seeing.  Peter then proposes and they make plans to run away together. Until her father interrupts and informs Sophie he's accepted somebody else's offer for her hand.  Naturally, spirited Sophie runs off to Peter only to be reminded that her friend is a ladies man.  It's obvious that she didn't really want to marry Peter when she nicely ends their "engagement" and runs off alone. Hours later she finally calls the Fairy Godfather Mortimer for help.  In asking for a knight's assistance, Sophie gives him an idea.  Within moments they are countries away and in front of the palace of the cursed prince. By day Henri is cursed to be a bear.  By night he is a human. Impulsively they marry....

Okay, Brittany Fichter has been in my to-read-eventually list for ages.  What a better time to be introduce to her writing than with this Entwined Fairy Tales series? An Unnatural Beanstalk is the second tale in the series and is based off of Jack and the Beanstalk.  Obviously. While one of the lesser known tales, Jack and the Beanstalk has one major plot line despite the many variations.  Jack has to go sell the family cow and is offered Magic Beans.  Jack, probably thinking more about what can be done with the beans, accepts the trade.  His mother, angered, flings the beans out the window.  Overnight the beans grow and grow and grow up into the clouds.  Up to a kingdom of giants. Here is where the tales I've read vary.  Jack defeats the giants.  He also rescues a princess or a golden goose. Fichter's version adds a welcome twist to this original story. Eva - younger sister to Rynn from The Goose Girl (Book One) was granted ...

Recently I discovered that a few of my favorite fairy tale retalers have joined together for an intertwined fairy tale journey. The Entwined Fairy Tales series featuring six books begins with KM Shea's The Goose Girl. This tale follows the eldest girl of a former woodcutter's family, Corynn also known as Rynn.  Rynn has taken a temporary assignment of escorting Princess Davina to her intended Prince in a different country. This is where things differ from the original tale.  Rynn does not like the princess, certainly.  She finds Princess Davina spoiled and silly.  Princess Davina is the one with the plan.  She doesn't want to marry the assumed hunchbacked Prince.  With a little help from her guards and a fairy gift, the Princess forces Rynn into pretending to be the princess. Rynn, filled with duty and doing what is right, is frustrated.  Threatened by the guards, constantly dropping hints at the Prince and his cousin Conrad, and trying...

Previously I reviewed/recommended Peaslee's Ella - a retelling of Cinderella. In a related tale - Will and Ella make a reappearance - Corbin Black finds himself attending the Prince Kenton's ball instead of marrying his fiance, Francine.  Princess Rose finds herself bitter and disappointed that Prince Kenton has decided to marry a commoner. While Francine doesn't get picked by the prince, she does disappoint Corbin by agreeing to meet the prince instead of saying that she was engaged.  In a moment of dispair Corbin packs up all of his tools and leaves his adoptive country for the one of his birth - Princess Rose's country... Once he's arrived he's informed that the Princess - nicknamed The Beast - has decided she'll marry a commoner and that all eligible men are required to give her a gift.  She'll marry the man who offers her the best one... So... this book took me several days to read.  Not because of anything the writer did, but something I ...

Okay, I might be getting my money's worth with this free Kindle Unlimited trial.  I most likely will continue with the service after the 17th. I really didn't think about the fact I'm doing yet another retold fairy tale, but this book really didn't feel like a retold.  The Ugly Step-Sister Strikes Back is a delightful take at the story from another perspective.  Mattie has a complicated family history.  Her father is a famous artist who has been married 6 times!  The marriage from when she was two years old introduced her to her step-sister (also two) even though the marriage doesn't last very long.   When that former step-mother dies, her father invites Ella to live with them since they don't know who Ella's biological father is. Ella, thankful, does everything she can to show her thanks.  She has a job so she doesn't spend Bill's - Mattie's father - money.  She does charity work.  She even cleans the house even though they h...

I may have spent way too much time absorbed into fairy tales and what not.  I love fairy tales.  I love reimagined fairy tales. Okay,  I simply adore reading in general. A while back I purchased a Princess and the pea retelling - The Princess Companion .  This was shortly after the second book in the series was released, but as much as I enjoyed the first book I couldn't bring myself to buy the second. The Princess Fugitive - Book 2 - is a Little Red Riding Hood reimagining and it never was my favorite tale.  However, Cellier's twist made me wish I had picked it up sooner.  However, that hesitation also meant I didn't have as much of a wait between books either... Wait...dear reader you must be thinking,  wasn't your Into the Enchanted Forest partially Little Red Riding Hood?  Yes.  So?  Just because I used the tale doesn't mean I liked the source.  Crazy, I know.  Regardless, I signed up for a free Kindle Unlimite...