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Briar Rose Jana Oliver Books

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Briar Rose Jana Oliver Books

This is an awesomely twisted and sweet take on the fairy tale. A little modern YA, a lot of fantasy. Cleverly done.


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Briar Rose Jana Oliver Books Reviews

I was so excited upon encountering this new story by highly acclaimed author of the `Demon Trappers' series, Jana Oliver, as I simply love this YA author. The classic enchanting fairytale Sleeping Beauty is cleverly reformed with inspired vision and imagination, into something contemporary and fresh. This uniquely told tale transports you into a whimsical world of metal monsters, tyrant leaders and fighting heroes. Brought to mind was the hit television drama series "Once Upon A Time" (abc productions), which contained similarities as to a modern retelling of fairytales. The rose pink cover of this Once Upon A Dream tale is beautifully eye-catching, and I think that many fans of this genre will be eager to pluck this new novel from the shelf.

From the back cover
For Briar Rose, life is anything but a fairy tale. She's stuck in a small town in deepest Georgia with parents who won't let her out of their sight, a bunch of small-minded, gossiping neighbors and an evil ex who's spreading nasty rumors about what she may or may not have done in the back of his car. She's tired of it all, so when, on her sixteenth birthday, her parents tell her that she is cursed and will go to sleep when the clock strikes midnight, she's actually kind of glad to leave it all behind. She says her goodbyes, lies down, and closes her eyes ...And then she wakes up. Cold, alone and in the middle of the darkest, most twisted fairy tale she could ever have dreamed of. Now Briar must fight her way out of the story that has been created for her, but she can't do it alone. She never believed in handsome princes, but now she's met one her only chance is to put her life in his hands, or there will be no happy ever after and no waking up.
"Fairy tales are more than true not because they tell us that Dragons exist, but because they tell us that Dragons can be beaten"
- Quote, G K Chesterton

Some of my favourite quotes in the book ~

"...Over the years this curse will remain vigilant, growing in strength, changing course as needed. Then, when the time is right, it will fulfil its calling. State its near-human desire for strength."

"It was her father's fault when Briar was four, he'd read her "Little Red Riding Hood" at bedtime. She'd come away from that experience with a true love of fairytales and a morbid fear of Wolves. From there she'd gone through the Disney phase where all fairytales ended happily ever after. Now she was solidly in the Brothers Grimm camp, where happy endings usually required a few corpses to even things out."

This supremely magical, dreamlike story is simply stunning and a shining example of how old fairytales can be reworked for a modern readership. Containing plenty of mysterious family feuds, devious intent and plots thickening this is a tale to truly loose yourself within! No fairytale would be complete without a handsome Prince and of course an evil curse...Reading this book felt like I had just plunged into Alice in Wonderland and I was trying to find my way out of a maze, where at every turn I would face something peculiar or unexpected. If you have a vivid imagination then `Briar Rose' is defiantly a creative masterwork of sheer ingenuity and refreshing originality. I cannot praise this story enough and so any rating less than a five would not do this book justice ~ my Young Adult TOP pick of the year!!

5 Stars *****
I loved the Demon Trappers series by Oliver and was super excited to read this fairy tale retelling by Oliver. I have had this book for quite some time and was so excited to finally have time to read it. Honestly I was a bit disappointed.

Briar Rose is sick of the small town in Georgia that she is growing up in. On her sixteenth birthday her ex is spreading false rumors about what they did in the car one night and the guy of her dreams tries to take advantage of her too. To put it lightly, Briar is having a bad sixteenth birthday. Things only get worse when Briar’s parents tell her that she is cursed and doomed to die on her sixteenth birthday. However, Briar doesn’t die...she goes to sleep and wakes up in the middle of the most twisted and dark fairy tale ever. Now she has to figure out how to break the curse before she is stuck there forever...or dies.

There are some really cool ideas in here, it's kind of a fairy tale within a fairy tale. While I loved the idea behind the story I just felt like parts were really awkward. The dialogue between characters felt forced and I had a lot of trouble staying engaged with the story.

I just felt like this was such a neat idea and it could have been so much more with more descriptive writing, more natural sounding dialogue, and characters that weren't so hard to engage with.

I also disliked the whole "pairing" off of all of the characters. While two of our leads (Briar and Joshua) do have a good foundation for a relationship, the other two couples do not. They both have a serious case of insta-love and in both cases it's a very unlikely insta-love. The whole thing just felt so forced.

So, enough complaining...onto what I loved. I loved the idea of a evil queen who infects a kingdom with vicious metal beasts, I loved some of the fight scenes. I loved how metal was used as both a talisman to ward off evil and as something evil that infected people. I also enjoyed the story behind the dark queen and why she was infecting the realm with metal. I enjoyed the idea of a fairy tale curse that sends a girl into a sort of cursed fairy tale.

The story wraps up well but overall I was a bit disappointed in the quality of the writing.

Overall an okay fairy tale retelling that had some interesting elements but was overall somewhat disappointing. The dialogue was awkward and the characters hard to engage with. I liked the idea behind the fairy tale within a fairy tale and loved the evil queen, but wasn’t really all that engaged in the overall story. I wouldn’t recommend this as a good fairytale retelling of Sleeping Beauty...instead check out Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose which is a Holocaust retelling of Sleeping Beauty that is much more well done.
It was a little on the boring side, predictable in most parts of the book. But it was something to read for sure.
This is an awesomely twisted and sweet take on the fairy tale. A little modern YA, a lot of fantasy. Cleverly done.