Tale Spins: retellings of popular fairy tales

I love fairy tale retellings, but I hate short story compilations. I know, I know, I always say that I’m going to stop reading them, but they are usually cheap on amazon and I get caught up in the price and the the genre. Tale Spins complies a few short stories, retellings of famous fairy tales, but with a modern type twist, or in certain places a side of the story that you might not have heard.

Snow White for instance, did you know that there were actually eight dwarfs? The one that is left out of the fairy tale named Creepy. The other dwarfs locked him in the basement because he was, well creepy. Written in verse, this shows the seven dwarfs as rude and self centered men who only look out for their own self interests. Creepy in fact is able to wake up the beautiful made the first two times the evil witch comes, but being locked in the basement is unable to kiss her away.

The second story is a retelling of the frog prince. A princess is being bullied at school and decides to seek out a witch to help her. Of course, she just agrees to the witch’s demands, signing her name without actually reading the contract. Then trying to pull a fast one on the witch, Princess Penny tries to steal from the witch, but of course that never works out well. If it wasn’t for the kindness of an enchanted creature, Penny would have been lost for all time.

The third story was actually my favorite. It was dark and sinister, a retelling of Jack and the beanstalk. Only this story has Jack as a young street kid who robs a wealthy doctor who lives in a penthouse. The journey of the doctor trying to catch Jack leads them both down a dark and dangerous, yet magical journey until the unexpected end.

I would love an actual full novel of Jack’d, that is how good I thought that third story is.

Zombie Fallout

It all started with the flu, or the flu vaccine to be more precise. H1N1 was tearing the world apart, until the scientists thought they found a cure. The public was so desperate for a remedy that the scientists didn’t go through their usual trials, but rushed the vaccine all over the world. People lined up, but all to soon realized that the vaccine that was suppose to save them all was really going to doom the world. One of the side effects of the vaccine, the only side effect of the untested vaccine pushed onto the pubic was a spiked fever within days of inoculation. A fever that got worse and worse until the person collapsed and died. They didn’t stay dead though, that would make for a boring story. They got up again, this time with a taste for human organs and blood.

These creatures, or Zombies as the public called them, ransacked the land, killing any and all things they met. Within a few days of the H1N1 vaccine being distributed, there was almost no humans left. That is where Mike Talbot’s story starts.

This seems like a good, hard-core action packed zombie book so far right? Well, you would be wrong, so wrong. It reads like the writing of a fifteen year olds journal. The human isn’t just “guy humor” filled with stupid puns and sex jokes, but rather the humor of an adolescent boy who hasn’t had sex, or even kissed a girl yet. The main character is a weak pathetic excuse for a man, trying to act macho when really he is a spineless git. Even during battles he takes time aside from, you know saving people and his family, to think about how the zombie might have looked before the infection, and how they might have looked naked. Mike groans on and on about how he’s a “survivalist,” but really he has no idea what to do.

I had this novel on audio book, and it was so difficult to get through, it was written so badly. It took me months, literally months to get through it because I found it just so painful. Don’t read it, there are better zombie novels out there. Heck, there is better Walking Dead fanfiction.

Petals on the Wind

This is another book that I read a while ago, actually it was before New Years. I was just to Flowers in the Attic) is her most popular, and while most people know the first book, Petals on the Wind its first sequel is not nearly as popular.

busy to write about it, and then sort of forgot about it until I found the novel when I was cleaning out my car. I was a huge VC Andrews fan in my youth. I read nearly everything of hers I could get my hands on, and in the days before eBooks and the popularity and ease of Amazon, getting multiple series with four plus books each meant I spend a lot of time in all sorts of book stores and yard sales. The Dollanganger series (

The story of Cathy, Chris and Carrie continues right where the horror of Flowers in the Attic leaves off. The three children are no longer just children, Chris in nearly an adult, Cathy should be in high school, and while Carrie looks and acts like a five year old she is much older. The three end up living with a widowed doctor, and in the grand tradition of VC Andrews and romance novels, the guardian ends up falling in love and having an affair with his under aged ward Cathy. Big sighs all around, along with a few “ewwws” and “gross.”

However, Cathy isn’t satisfied with the older doctor Paul and leaves him for the young dancer Julian without even breaking off her engagement to the doctor. After touring the world, and both Cathy and Julian having numerous affairs, Julian is killed in a motor vehicle accident leaving Cathy with mountains of debt, pregnant and alone.

After Julian’s death, Cathy becomes obsessed with destroying her mother, blaming her again for all the problems that she has encountered in her life. (Really, she made her own mistakes as an adult, but lets never move on from childhood trauma). She then moves with her baby and younger sister to the town her mother resides in. Only, her sister commits suicide by swallowing rat poisoning so that she can be with her twin brother who died over a decade before. Spends months seducing her mother’s new husband and then tells her mother all the sorted details of the affair in public. Her mother and lover are then burned to death in a fire that tears apart the entire building leaving ashes of the house the children were once held captive in.

Feeling like she finally got revenge on her mother and grandmother, Cathy moves back in with doctor Paul. The two marry and have a son, although Paul soon dies from heart problems (so, basically everyone that Cathy sleeps with dies at a very young age). After Paul’s death, she decides to marry her brother Chris, as the two have had an interesting sexual and loving past. They move out to California so that no one will know they were actually brother and sister, and then raise Cathy’s two children as their own.

Weird, yes. A typical VC Andrews romance novel, also Yes. These kind of novels tend to be a little addicting to read, and if you can get past the uggg and ewwww factor they can be great beach and sun bathing books.

Under My Skin (Skinned #1)

I honestly sort of forgot about this book, I think I read it at the beginning of January and never really took the time to write or even thing about it. What does that tell you about the book? A bit boring actually. To much cheesy romance, predictable plot lines, and over done vampires, werwolves and other mythical creatures. Just the main characters name is pretentious. Eryn, with a y?! No offense to real life Eryns, but really? Trying to make the characters seem more mystic by adding "Ys" where they don't belong is so aggravating.
Now the story, Eryn lost both of her parents a few months ago under unusual circumstances. Her mother was a hybrid wolf and her father was a mystical hunter. After their deaths, the council sent her to live in a small town with her grandfather, only the small town is full of mystical beings. Even without realizing it Eryn is drawn to the goth girl and her egocentric, "weirdo" crowd. Turns out they are fairies, hunters, witches and wolves. But the real problem in town, the vampires. And unluckily for Eryn, the leader's son is obsessed with her. Two sides of the paranormal are tearing the town apart, and Eryn is stuck in the middle. What side will she choose, especially since both sides are keeping secrets and nothing is as black and white as Eryn first thought it was.
If you like books like Twilight, Immortals, or any of the paranormal romances that have gained popularity the last few years then you will like this. But for me, I prefer a little more action and paranormal rather than the romance.

The Testing Guide: an ePrequel

            I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, eBooks are amazing. Little short stories or prequels that add so much to my favorite novels. The Testing Guide is an ePrequel to The Testing Series, and takes place before the start of the first book, years before it actually. The first half of the book recounts Cia Vale’s older brother Zeen trying to pass his exams and get into the testing. Of course he doesn’t make it, that we already know from the series, and as readers we can gather the reason that no one made it through to the testing from their village. We also get to see a young Cia determined to pass into the Testing, which is cool as well.

            The second half of the ePrequel are questions that one would have to know to pass. Kind of like a workbook. It is just something fun.

Independent Study (The Testing #2) REVIEW

I have to be honest, at least at this point in the series; this is better than Divergent and on par to be better than the Hunger Games. I talk about this novel all the time, I think about the kind of world Cia Vale lives in, and how I would deal with that sort of life. I love every situation and character plot of this series, and this sequel didn’t let me down. Independent Study is one of the greatest post apocalyptic novels I have read in a very long time.

Cia Vale survived the Testing, passed with flying colours and is now at University in Tosu City. Everything should be great, her boyfriend loves her, she gets a great internship in government with the President, a house that thinks she intelligent, everything should be perfect. But it isn’t. Cia heard the tape of herself after the Testing, she knows what she did, and what they did to her. The government is the enemy, at least some of them are. And her boyfriend might be an enemy too. Cia knows what Thomas did in the games, the lies he told and the lives he took.

Cia wants to bring down the organization that allows for the testing, but even the people she thinks she can trust she finds she is wrong about. Hidden letters, secret meetings, and more murders than even the Testing saw. Cia realizes that she might actually be alone in this, with no allies or friends who wont give her up for an advancement in University or placement in the government’s inner circle. Loyalty, friends and even family are all a changing game as far as Cia can tell, but what she witnesses at the end will forever change the final installment of this series.

I literally have a countdown on my phone for when the final book comes out. I gave this series to multiple people for Christmas, and received text messages from all of them saying they loved it (the girl I babysat as a child called to tell me she likes it more than Hunger Games).  It holds up to the first novel, and exceeds all expectations.