Goodreads || Amazon
ARC via Andye @ readingteen.net
Published September 20, 2016 || Tor Teen
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In the enchanted kingdom of Brooklyn, the fashionable people put on cute shoes, go to parties in warehouses, drink on rooftops at sunset, and tell themselves they’ve arrived. A whole lot of Brooklyn is like that now—but not Vassa’s working-class neighborhood.
In Vassa’s neighborhood, where she lives with her stepmother and bickering stepsisters, one might stumble onto magic, but stumbling out again could become an issue. Babs Yagg, the owner of the local convenience store, has a policy of beheading shoplifters—and sometimes innocent shoppers as well. So when Vassa’s stepsister sends her out for light bulbs in the middle of night, she knows it could easily become a suicide mission.
But Vassa has a bit of luck hidden in her pocket, a gift from her dead mother. Erg is a tough-talking wooden doll with sticky fingers, a bottomless stomach, and a ferocious cunning. With Erg’s help, Vassa just might be able to break the witch’s curse and free her Brooklyn neighborhood. But Babs won’t be playing fair. . . .
Inspired by the Russian folktale Vassilissa the Beautiful and Sarah Porter’s years of experience teaching creative writing to New York City students.
Dolls with bottomless stomachs, men on motorcycles who have
the night trapped inside their eyes, and mothers who didn’t tell you
everything. The nights are getting longer in Brooklyn, and Vassa may be the
only one who can change this. She has to even it all back out again. When her
horrid stepsister number 2 sends her on a quest for light bulbs at the store
where people get beheaded, she finds herself in a sticky situation. What
follows is a re-telling of the Russian fairy tale Vasilisa
the Beautiful.
Unfortunately, I found the book severely lacking any sort of
luster. I liked Erg (the doll) some of the time, but the characters themselves
other than her were very undeveloped. And when a character is lacking
development, there is a pretty good chance that their relationships are lacking
that relationship as well.
Long story short, it really was. I felt that one
relationship was developed wonderfully, but this did not make up for the rest
of them. I didn’t understand what Vassa was fighting for, or why she was
fighting. I mean, duh, I knew she was trying to get the sun to come back up
again. I didn’t know what made her think it was her job though. There was a gap
in her train of thought that I just didn’t know what to do with. I felt like it
was one moment this- one moment that.
The book’s main issue was that it just wasn’t super fluid,
and the characters just weren’t fleshed out enough for me to be able to connect
with them.
Something potentially dangerous is about to happen? Go for
it.
The love of your life appears? Eh- you do you, I have no
emotional connection to the outcome.
Something that is supposedly super impactful happens in
Vassa’s life? Nice. (that nice as said with no emotional inflection)
It wasn’t that the book was bad. It wasn’t. It even had the
potential to be interesting. But the fact that I just plain did not care what
happened in the character’s lives. The book itself—I mean, it was fine. Just
fine is not good or great. It was a robotic read. Not one that I would want to
endure again.
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