Stealing Snow by Danielle Paige

Series: Stealing Snow (bk. 1)

Genera(s): Fantasy/Paranormal Romance

Subjects: witches, winter, magic, supernatural

Setting: Up-state New York and another world called Algid

POV/Tense: 1^st person POV, past tense: Snow

Age/Grade Level: Teen

Length: 370 pgs.

HC/PB: Hardcover

List Price: $18.99

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Summary/ product description: “First kisses sometimes wake slumbering princesses, undo spells, and spark happily ever afters.

Mine broke Bale.

Seventeen-year-old Snow has spent her life locked in Whittaker Psychiatric—but she isn’t crazy. And that’s not the worst of it. Her very first kiss proves anything but innocent…when Bale, her only love, turns violent.

Despite Snow knowing that Bale would never truly hurt her, he is taken away—dashing her last hope for any sort of future in the mental ward she calls home. With nowhere else to turn, Snow finds herself drawn to a strange new orderly who whispers secrets in the night about a mysterious past and a kingdom that’s hers for the taking—if only she can find her way past the iron gates to the Tree that has been haunting her dreams.

Beyond the Tree lies Algid, a land far away from the real world, frozen by a ruthless king. And there too await the River Witch, a village boy named Kai, the charming thief Jagger, and a prophecy that Snow will save them all.”

My Review:  Stealing Snow is the first book in a new series by Danielle Paige, author of Dorothy Must Die. The book has a very similar subject matter, though rather than being a sequel series to a older piece a literature like Dorothy Must Die, it’s a loose retelling of the Hans Christian Anderson’s Snow Queen that feels kind of like the movie Frozen meet Dorothy Must Die, so it’s more like Snow-King-Must-Die this time. Much like her other series, there are witches and magic. There’s a lot of humor and modernized things in this fantasy world (like a night club and snow mobiles). It take some of the fantasy clichés and bring life to them. It’s a very fun read.

There were a lot of characters in this book. The main character Snow lived in an insane asylum for most of her life and feel abandoned by her mother, who only visits rarely. Snow was sent there after trying to drag a childhood friend through a mirror because she took Through the Looking Glass literally. Snow has pale skin, brown eyes, and white-blond hair streaked with white-gray, supposedly from the pills, but Snow doesn’t think so. She names the different pills she’s given after the Seven Dwarf, which is hilarious since her name is Snow. The asylum has a lot of odd people in it, including Magpie, the kleptomaniac, a girl called Wing who thinks she can fly, and a guy who thinks he can “blink” through time. Then there’s Bale, her boyfriend. He’s a pyromaniac and he tried choking her, so now they’ve been separated.

One night, a mysterious new orderly named Jagger shows up and tells her to go to the Tree. Something happens to Bale that night. He suddenly disappears and she goes outside to the tree and ends up in a world called Algid. There she meets a River Witch named Nepenthe, a young architect named Kai, and a nature witch named Gerd. Snow stays in a house with them for a while so the River Witch can teach Snow to control her snow powers. Kai shows Snow the town and tells her about Algid. Snow learns about a prophecy about a Snow Princess, about herself.

Snow runs into Jagger again, who introduces her to the Robbers, who are all female, except for him. Their queen’s named Margot, there a girl named Howl’s who go a great voice, and a girl named Fathom who Snow saw selling potions when she was with Kai. Margot claims she can help Snow get Bale back, but she must first help them get a piece of the king’s mirror that is with Snow’s cousin, the duchess. Snow trains hard for complete control of her power and learns to be Robber.

Think book was crazy and epic, but sometimes I did get a little confused and disappointed in how things kept changing. I loved the world building for it’s descriptions and crazy colors, but something felt inconsistent, like the technology, but maybe it was just magic. Some things felt to ridiculous and frivolous, which was okay for Dorothy Must Die, because Oz is just a crazy place, but I wanted something more High Fantasy, like Snow Like Ashes and Six of Crows, but as a parallel world. I did enjoy the book and want to read the sequel.

I recommend this book to fans of Danielle Paige, the movie Frozen, Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch, Six of Crows and the Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo, The Young Elites by Marie Lu, Cold Spell by Jackson Pierce, Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, the World Walker trilogy by Josephine Angelini, and any unique YA fantasy series out there.

Cover Art Review: I like the cover, but it reminds me too much of Cold Spell by Jackson Pierce.