1 star
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, I messed up and read these out of order. To be fair, the library only had books 4 and 5 on audiobook and I thought they were each their own individual stories. So yes, I missed out on some of the background stuff which made reading this one a little confusing. But I managed. However, that wasn’t my only problem with this book. Based on the cover and the title (which is repeated so many times in the actual text that I never want to see the phrase again), I assumed this was a book about Maleficent. Honestly, she is hardly featured in it. Yes, I enjoyed the flashbacks to her childhood and the events that occurred in fairy school that got her to that point we are all familiar with. Then there was just so much other stuff that was dull, confusing, and overly complicated. I don’t think anyone would go into a book with this cover and want to read about a bunch of people who aren’t Maleficent. This whole book was so convoluted. The twists are ridiculous and don’t seem to fit with the original Disney story. Also, I just didn’t really like the writing. The dialogue was awkward and clunky. The narration over-explained everything to the point of making interesting tidbits horribly boring. I was excited for a predominately female cast of characters, but the amount of “she thought/hoped/recalled/wished/knew” was irritating. It seemed the characters didn’t do much outside of their own heads. The narration often gets caught up describing the character’s every thought then going on to describe how that character verbalized the thoughts we just read about. So boring. Having read other reviews, it seems many people liked this one the least (or strangely the best) of the series so I think I will still go back and at least read the first book in the series. Based on the amount of recap at the start of this book, it sounds like way more stuff happens in the previous books. Goodreads |