Reason for Reading: I've wanted to read this series for ages and have just never got around to it. And that's the only reason I read the 'Once Upon a Time' series anyway. All in all, I did enjoy the story for what it was: a quick, guilty-pleasure-fairy-tale read.

You can't have the moral of good conquers evil if there is no evil to conquer to begin with. Dokey sacrificed the meaning of the original fairy tale for a fluffy, too-cute-for-its-own-good happy ending. After reading the disappointing ending, maybe she can come heal mine. We never actually get to see her heal any broken hearts, which is pretty disappointing because I was wondering how the heck she did it. The Snow Queen here isn't a queen, but instead a cursed princess with the task of walking the earth forever, healing broken hearts, and being perpetually sixteen. I suppose it isn't as pretty sounding as 'Grace.' The author also reminds us nearly every other page that the Snow Queen is named Deirdre and that her name means 'Sorrow.' Okay, thanks. It's rare for Andersen's characters to be given names in his original tales, but he gave them names in 'The Snow Queen,' so it puzzled me that Gerda's name was changed. The main male character got to keep his name (only spelled 'Kai' instead of 'Kaj', but both are pronounced like 'Kay'). I was confused by the name change of the main female character (Grace instead of Gerda), even though the story stresses numerous times that names are extremely important. I'm all for different interpretations of fairy tales.

And usually I'm all right with that, it's only a retelling after all. Aside from a few surface details, like the main characters living next door to each other, there isn't much in common with Andersen's original. So when this retelling of 'The Snow Queen' came out, I skipped the backlog of the rest of the books in the series I haven't yet read and dove head first into this one. The 'Once Upon a Time' series is a guilty pleasure for me, and I adore Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales.

Winter's Child by Cameron Dokey