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Twisted: The Girl Who Uncovered Rumplestilskin's Name by Bonnie M. HennessyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Source: Received eBook for this tour
Genre: Twisted Fairy Tale
Book Description: An old tale tells the story of how a little man named Rumpelstiltskin spun straw into gold and tricked a desperate girl into trading away her baby. But that’s not exactly how it happened.
The real story began with a drunken father who kept throwing money away on alcohol and women, while his daughter, Aoife, ran the family farm on her own. When he gambled away everything they owned to the Duke, it was up to her to spin straw into gold to win it all back.
With her wits and the help of a magical guardian, she outsmarted the Duke and saved the day.
Well almost…
Her guardian suddenly turned on Aoife and sent her on a quest to find his name, the clues to which were hidden deep in the woods, a moldy dungeon, and a dead woman’s chamber.
This is not the tale of a damsel in distress, but a tenacious, young woman who solved a mystery so great that not even the enchanted man who spun straw into gold could figure it out.
Not until Aoife came along.
My thoughts: Wow! This is a well done retelling of Rumplestilskin. There is a lot of depth to the story and it had the feeling of the old-world.
Aoife is a talented young woman. She readily accepts most of the people who cross her path. She has an intelligent mind and is able to figure out how to turn a poorly performing farm into one producing a profit. Her father brags that she has the "Midas" touch and can turn things to gold. This backfires on him when he is told that he must prove his claims or loose his farm.
The book follows closely to the original on the basic plot of the story. Aoife has Rumplestilskin help her perform an impossible task so that she can save her family.
The basics are similar, but the stories have marked differences. I enjoyed the changes. The story is dark, there is a lot of pain behind the actions of the characters. I think most of the time we think of fairy tales being the Disney renditions, where in fact they are pretty dark and frightening.
This book has a lot of innuendo. I didn't find any descriptive love scenes, but they are implied. Also Aoife bring her father home from the local brothel on many occasions. The book also contains violence. I would recommend this book without hesitation to a more mature reader (16+)
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About the Author: Bonnie grew up a shy, quiet girl who the teachers always seated next to the noisy boys because they knew she was too afraid to talk to anyone. She always had a lot she wanted to say but was too afraid to share it for fear she might die of embarrassment if people actually noticed her. Somewhere along the line, perhaps after she surprised her eighth grade class by standing up to a teacher who was belittling a fellow student, she realized that she had a voice and she didn’t burst into flames when her classmates stared at her in surprise.Not long after that, she began spinning tales, some of which got her into trouble with her mom. Whether persuading her father to take her to the candy store as a little girl or convincing her parents to let her move from Los Angeles to Manhattan to pursue a career at eighteen as a ballet dancer with only $200 in her pocket, Bonnie has proven that she knows how to tell a compelling story.
Now she spends her time reading and making up stories for her two children at night. By day she is an English teacher who never puts the quiet girls next to the noisy boys and works hard to persuade her students that stories, whether they are the ones she teaches in class or the ones she tells to keep them from daydreaming, are better escapes than computers, phones, and social media.
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Lisa, thanks for the review!
ReplyDeleteI live in Ireland & it was actually the use of the very Irish name 'Aoife' that caught my attention.
ReplyDeleteThe cover definitely catches my eye. I also have always liked the story of Rumplestilskin so I would be very interested to read a retelling of it.
ReplyDeleteThis book is "my cup of tea", looking forward to reading it!
ReplyDeleteI have not read many reinterpretations of Rumpelstiltskin!
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