Kill Me Softly - Sarah Cross

3/5

** spoiler alert ** Okay so this book had some things I really liked and some things that were just shit…. Let’s go through the list of the bad first

1) The fact that the MC is a 15 year old girl, acting much MUCH older as in buying sexy lingerie older and running around without parental guidance.
2) The fact that this was supposed to be a Sleeping Beauty retelling among a dozen other fairy tales but we spend most of the book with angsty teen drama that totally takes away from the otherwise cool aspects of this book
3) Insta-love which is really just magically induced lust and makes no sense
4) The fact that in the space of like four days the MC falls in love with two brothers and this does not seem to bother the brothers at all, even though one is ridiculously too old for the MC to even consider dating.
5) The plot, which is the MC trying to find her parents, gets totally loss in the partying, snog fests and teen drama. Again, this book could have gotten five stars had the author focused on the fairy tales more than the other bull shit.
6) Not enough fairy tales. What I saw of the ideas was great but I wanted so much more of it.
7) The characters…. Uh…Aside from Blue and Felix I found them all rather shallow and without depth. There was the possibility of the MC and the other characters being really great but for me they just fell short and honestly…I didn’t care for the MC very much.
8) The ending- while brilliant in many aspects a huge chunk is left unresolved when it didn’t need to be. This will probably wind up a series, when a) I fucking HATE that and b) it doesn’t need to be.


Now the good.

1) The ending of this book surprised me… The author threw in the story of Bluebeard, which I love but never winds up in retellings so I totally spaced it and was really happy when I figured out where it was taking me…. Just like The Singing Bone Blue Beard is not a fairy tale you can make pretty.
2) The fact that Felix and Blue can kill you by kissing you, draining your love and life away. I love that dark sort of twisted bull shit… It’s horrible and creepy, but being in love with something that can kill you is kind of a turn on, albeit stupid as fuck.
3) The way the author changed up the fairy tale retelling. I enjoyed the concept that fairies curse or “bless” people into traditional roles of fairy tales. Snow white, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty etc…etc… And not just the nice ones…the bad ones too Like the Huntsman from Snow White and the Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood. The stamp on the character’s back showing which fairy tale they belong to was really creative.


Yeah so this book got better towards the end, which is why I have bumped it from two starts to three. The first half was kind of annoying. It was a fast easy read and I did enjoy myself, but it had so much more promise. The writing was good, it was just that the storyline failed in places and the characters didn’t inspire enough loyalty in me to love them. The only character I truly liked was Felix, and he’s the bad guy