27 June 2014

Dorothy Must Die


Paige, Danielle. Dorothy Must Die. HarperCollins, 2014.

Dorothy returned to Oz and stole all of the magic.  Now she's a crazy power-hungry ruler who has turned Oz on its head. Enter Amy Gumm, another girl from Kansas who is whisked via tornado into the land of Oz, where the inhabitants beg her to help them stop the insanity.  In order to solve all of their problems, Amy must kill Dorothy.

If I only had the first 400 pages of this book, it'd be really good. Probably worth 5 stars. I loved the concept - the idea of Dorothy returning to Oz and getting all power-hungry, the mentions of all the different Oz characters that appear in the books even though they don't make it to the movie, etc.

But.

This book had a TERRIBLE endgame. And by that I mean it didn't end. This is going to be another book in a long line of YA novels that just don't need to be made into series. The Kill Dorothy plan should have either gone off swimmingly or failed completely, but this "well, who knows, maybe in the next book they'll actually kill her" ending is made of fail. Sigh.

My students are all eagerly waiting for my to finish this book so they can borrow it. I'm going to have to bite my tongue so that I don't spoil it for them and tell them it's not worth it. But they can certainly borrow this book, since it won't be staying in my personal collection.

Recommended for: young adults, fans of fractured fairy tales
Red Flags: lots of violence (it is a fairy tale war, after all)
Overall Rating: 2.5/5 stars

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