Title: Stealing Snow (Stealing Snow #1)
Author: Danielle Paige
Genre: Young Adult | Retellings | Fantasy | Magic
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens
Publication Date: September 20, 2016
Format: ARC
Source: BEA
Seventeen-year-old Snow has spent the majority of her life within the walls of the Whittaker Institute, a high security mental hospital in upstate New York. Deep down, she knows she's not crazy and doesn't belong there. When she meets a mysterious, handsome new orderly and dreams about a strange twisted tree she realizes she must escape and figure out who she really is.
Using her trusting friend Bale as a distraction, Snow breaks free and races into the nearby woods. Suddenly, everything isn't what it seems, the line between reality and fantasy begins to blur, and she finds herself in icy Algid--her true home--with witches, thieves, and a strangely alluring boy named Kai, none of whom she's sure she can trust. As secret after secret is revealed, Snow discovers that she is on the run from a royal lineage she's destined to inherit, a father more powerful and ruthless than she could have imagined, and choices of the heart that could change the fate of everything...including Snow's return to the world she once knew.
This breathtaking first volume begins the story of how Snow becomes a villain, a queen, and ultimately a hero (goodreads).
So much nope.
Plot: Stealing Snow is pretty terrible from the beginning. Snow has been placed in an asylum because she had tried to walk through a mirror when she was a child. I never thought that clumsiness could be diagnosed as a mental instability (but really, this explanation is bull). One night, after trying to sneak into her boyfriend's solitary quarters, she is approached by a boy who keeps calling her "Princess" with a capital P. Typical right? So of course, she is thrust into a world and must acknowledge a history that had been hidden from her.
In all honesty, I ended up skimming this at the 50% point. It was boring, it was dry, and it has been done a million times before. This novel is full of all the tropes that we saw in
Dorothy Must Die, but at least
Dorothy had a rather dark angle.
Stealing Snow really is just a carbon copy of Dorothy Must Die. We have a girl who has been treated badly by her mother, she gets thrown into a new world where she has powers, she must fulfill a prophecy against an evil overlord, AND she joins a ragtag group.
Talk about originality
Characters: First thing's first, the names are weird. Snow, Jagger, Bale. And it just keeps going. While it is a minor complaint, it takes away from serious moments when a character is gravely describing the state of the world, but then ends with some ridiculous name. It's just laughable. Snow is bland but somehow has three separate love interests. Maybe more, I started skimming so I have no idea what the state of her love life is like.
Worldbuildling: Like Dorothy Must Die, the world was just weird. It had different regions and some depth, but not enough to keep me interested.
Short N Sweet: Stealing Snow was unnecessary.
Labels: 1 star, bloomsbury USA Childrens, book review, dorothy must die, review, stealing snow
