Another Snow White Story

I recently finished reading Sleep Like Death by Kalynn Bayron.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT

  Rating: 3/5 stars

"Only the truly desperate - and foolish - seek out the Knight, an ancient monster who twists wishes into curses. Eve knows this first-hand: one of her mothers was cursed by the Knight and trapped in the body of a songbird. With the unique ability to communicate with animals and conjure weapons from nature, Eve has trained all her life to defeat him.

With more and more villagers harmed by the Knight's corrupt deals, Eve believes she's finally ready to face him. But when Queen Regina begins acting strangely - talking to seemingly no one, isolating herself, and lashing out at the slightest provocation - Eve must question if her powers are enough to save her family and her kingdom."

I have a lot of criticism for this book, so I will begin with what I appreciated about it. 

It was a very easy read. It took little to no effort to absorb the story and its contents, even without giving it my full attention. I appreciated it for this. But for the most part, that’s where my appreciations end. 

This novel felt grossly under thought out with various different story elements feeling unorganized and underutilized. 

Eve’s powers were never fully realized, neither to the reader nor to Eve. It felt as though her powers set her apart at the beginning of the novel, but they steadily became nothing more than a puzzle piece to her origin, their nature becoming wholly unexplored and underused. 

The only two present romances in the entire novel were also fully undeveloped and this novel did great at making me not care about a single character or their relationships with each other. I never got to experience the berth of any character’s personality, the novel instead takes an almost obsessive approach to the Knight. In hindsight, was the Knight the protagonist instead of Eve? Because he gained both more exposition and attention than she did. 

The “Snow White retelling” approach was almost wholly absent up until the final ~20% of the book. Instead, it felt like a mashup of various Grim Brothers fairy tales with one of the primary characters being Snow White (the twist is that it isn’t who you’d expect it to be). 

I’m unsure what this novel was trying to be, but its attempts were lost on me. In good faith, I can’t give this work more than 3 out of 5 stars. It wasn’t atrocious, but I’m not sure I’m happy to have experienced it. 

Check out Sleep Like Death, and decide it this fits a Snow White retelling tagline or not.

Happy Reading :)