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: 1st 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.
