Ask and ye shall receive! Since so many of you seem curious about my ‘dissenting’ review, here we go. This is my third Once Upon a Time read, and it’s one I have distinctly mixed feelings about. In fact, since I know how popular it’s been in the OUaT challenge, I went and read everyone else’s reviews before writing my own. But now I’m back, and I’m a little nervous about explaining my thoughts since I think they go against the general tendency (and I know that the author is aware of book blogs, which makes it worse, and she seems like such a nice/cool person and she had to be taught at home for part of high school because of chronic fatigue, which is just like me except I was diagnosed w/ fibromyalgia, and I love discovering people who sucessfully manage their CFS/fibro, but I can’t lie, can I?).

Here goes. I love fairy tales-I love reading the originals, I love retellings, I love stories about ‘faeries’ that aren’t anything like the Grimm Brothers. I also appreciate the YA genre: I don’t automatically assume that the writing is somehow Less Serious. I wanted to say that first, so you can keep it in mind as you read the rest.

At the pure story level, I enjoyed this book; it took about a hundred pages to get going, but that doesn’t really bother me, and I thought it was interesting to see how Ani, the dethroned princess, grew as a person and went about trying to reclaim her place. I like the world Hale has created for the fairy tales, with all of its little rituals and traditions and clothing (have I mentioned I love fantasy? the kind of fantasy that creates whole new worlds, and cultures, and sometimes reads like an anthropology book?). I liked the idea of Ani talking with birds and her horse (and since I knew the original fairy tale, I knew what was coming with the horse…but as a kid, I would have stopped reading the book right there. I had a strict ‘no animals harmed’ policy towards movies and books.), and I appreciated that Hale made the geese mean (because they are. Geese attacked me when I was four and my sister was two, and my mom had to put us up on top of the car to save us. But I digress.). And I thought that Ani’s love interest was pretty adorable.

All of that being said, this book disappointed me. I think I was expecting more layers and depths, more like The Book of Lost Things or The Stolen Child or The Wee Free Men (which somehow I never got around to reviewing, so I found a review to link to). The Goose Girl never challenged me: Ani did all of the things she was supposed to, and all of the other characters behaved perfectly consistently with their good or bad labels (there are two exceptions: Conrad, the goose boy and a relatively minor one, and Ani’s aunt in the beginning, whom I loved and kept wishing would pop up again with her ambiguity, but she never did). It somehow didn’t capture the je ne sais quo (yes, I realise how pretentious that sounds, but I couldn’t think of an English alternative) about fairy tales that gives you goosebumps and makes you look at forests a bit more suspiciously. Instead, this was entertaining fluff, and while I appreciate fluff, I wouldn’t rush out and tell anyone that they had to read it right away.

So, perhaps I can chalk it up high expectations. I certainly wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading this book, but I wouldn’t encourage them either. It was a rather average read…even the early Harry Potter books had a bit more complexity that this.

Favourite Passages
When Ani shadowed Gilsa into the coop anyway, Gilsa slapped her hands away from the task and then asked her what the chickens were saying.
“‘People are here to take the eggs’ and so on. Chickens aren’t the best conversationalists.”
“I’m glad,” said Gilsa. “Makes me feel better about eating them.”

Ani stood. “We came back here to beg for your help, and before I even ask you’re waiting for me at the door.”