Rate: Enjoyed it (3,5 stars)
Synopsis:
An edgy fairy tale retelling of "Snow White" set in the world of Kill Me Softly for fans of Once Upon a Time and Grimm.
If you want to live happily ever after, first you have to stay alive.
Viv knows there’s no escaping her fairy-tale curse. One day her beautiful stepmother will feed her a poison apple or convince her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Henley, to hunt her down and cut out her heart before she breaks his. In the city of Beau Rivage, some princesses are destined to be prey.
But then Viv receives an invitation to the exclusive club where the Twelve Dancing Princesses twirl away their nights. There she meets Jasper, an underworld prince who seems to have everything—but what he really wants is her. He vows to save her from her dark fate if she’ll join him and be his queen.
All Viv has to do is tear herself away from the huntsman boy who still holds her heart. Then she might live to see if happily ever after is a promise the prince can keep. But is life as an underworld queen worth sacrificing the true love that might kill her?
Faced with a possible loophole to her "Snow White" curse, Viv goes underground, literally, to find the prince who's fated to rescue her. But is life safe in the Underworld worth the price of sacrficing the love that might kill her?
POP CULTURE CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF TWISTING FAIRY TALES: ABC's Once Upon a Time and NBC's Grimm continue to pull in high ratings. And with the anticipated Angelina Jolie Maleficent (2014), the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods (2014), and Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella (2015), Hollywood is infected with fairy tale fever.
CAMEOS FROM FAVORITE CHARACTERS: Viv, who first appeared in Kill Me Softly trailed by her brooding boy-toy Henley, takes center stage in this new Beau Rivage tale. Other familiar characters including Blue and Jewel are back to help her defy her destiny.
TEENS LOVE THIS FAIRY TALE WORLD: Kill Me Soflty was a 2013 YALSA Teens' Top 10. Readers have been clamoring for a sequel.
A FRESH TAKE ON THE FAMILIAR: Drawing on "Snow White," "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," and "Rumpelstiltskin," Tear You Apart is very conscious of the way these stories have pervaded pop culture, twisting known tropes into an exciting new story that can stand on its own.
The Beau Rivage series is one of those fairy tale retellings series that you need to read. Full of magical places, lots of curses, evil characters and good characters and romance. However, these stories might make you see the well-known fairy tale stories with different eyes.
Tear You Apart is Viv's stories. She has a cinderella curse, so she's cursed to have a stepmother who hates her and wants to rip her heart, to have a father who does not truly care about her and a lover who's fated to kill her.
For those who read Kill Me Softly, you might have read glimpses of this character. But if you haven't, Viv is an unusual character. For me, she was kind of bipolar: one time you were sad about her situation and you wanted to hug her, and the next she would say something or do something that would turn her into a complete witch, not to say something else. That was what made me disconnect a bit from the story and not feel as much for Viv as I felt for Mira in Kill Me Softly. I didn't like how she treated Henley. I understood that the curse sucked and made her life miserable, and that Henley was meant to kill her because of his own curse, bad man, are you serious? Why do you have to hurt the poor guy so much and make him go nuts? That was all I kept saying at the beginning of the story. Although I also have to say that Henley had some "Are you serious?" moments in the story.
Having bad guys, the ones destined to be the evil boys in the fairy tales stories, is what is characteristic from Sarah Cross' novels. In this story, however, we have two guys: the one who says the curse that will kill her and the one who will save her. Despite this, not everything is that seems to be and I liked that the author kept us readers in the dark until the very last minute to not know who will truly be the prince charming in this story.
The plot was amazing. The twists and turns ins this story are amazing, because you really did not see them coming. However, the story starts very slow and it seems that all the good stuff is packed when you have read half the book.
We get to see new characters that will make the twists and turns happen! And for those fans of Once Upon a Time these new characters will make them smile and be more invested in the story.
I love the Beau Rivage stories and I just hope that Sarah Cross has a new story coming soon, because I am dying to see what comes next!
"After the Ball" is a short story set in Beau Rivage, a city where fairy tales come to life, and ancient stories are played out again and again. You can read more about the cursed fairy-tale characters of Beau Rivage in Sarah Cross' novel Kill Me Softly.
Read and/or download AFTER THE BALL here.
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Sarah Cross is the author of the fairy tale novels Kill Me Softly and Tear You Apart (coming January 2015), the superhero novel Dull Boy, and the Wolverine comic "The Adamantium Diaries." She loves fairy tales, lowbrow art, secret identities and silence.
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