Review: The Evil Queen

The Evil Queen by Gena Showalter
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This sounded like a great book. The concept is fantastic - I'm a huge Disney villain fan, and retellings of fairy tales can be really fun, especially when told from the villain's perspective. Alas and alack, this one felt like reading a rushed first draft of a book. It was full of childish dialogue, whirlwind speed scene changes with very little substance, and little to no real character development.

I understand that it's a YA, so it's going to be written to appeal to younger readers, and the prose will be at a different level than a book written for adults, but honestly, it felt like a middle schooler wrote it.

I feel like it was a great concept with poor execution -- lots of potential, but never quite lives up to it.

All in all, I felt like it was appropriate to give this one two stars, the extra star because of the interesting concept and relatively neat magic system.

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Review to come, but boy, this was a mess of a book. Felt like a rough draft of a middle grades book, rushed into production because of the big name. :(

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