A fantasy retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. A novella.
Publication year: 2021
Publisher: Tor
Format: ebook
Page count in GoodReads: 128
Zinnia Gray was born with a disease that kills the inflicted shortly after their 21st birthday. Her parents have, of course, tried to find a cure and she's treated often, but nobody has cured it. All her life, she knows that she's a dying girl. On her sixth birthday, she reads a fairy tale book with gorgeous Arthur Rackham illustrations and immediately loves Sleeping Beauty. She becomes obsessed with the story.
Today is Zinnia's 21st birthday. Her best, and only, friend Charm invites Zinnia to their favorite place so that Zinnia can have one last princess birthday. But things go weird.
This is a wonderful, twisty retelling of the story. Zinnia struggles with the suffocating love of her parents who want to protect her while she wants to live as much as she can. Despite her gloomy circumstances, she and Charm have sarcastic humor. She also knows a lot about pop culture and makes a lot of references.
I thoroughly enjoyed this story. I loved the twists Harrow put to the fairy tale, but I won't spoil them here. I'm looking forward to the next novella, A Mirror Mended. Happily, the Finnish library system has a few of her books. I need to check them out.
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