Entwined

a Twelve-dancing Princesses retelling. And one that any fairytale-retelling-lover MUST read. 4 stars!

4.5 stars

“Entwined” is a standalone novel written by Heather Dixon. The novel is a retelling of the twelve dancing princesses. Azalea is the main protagonist of the novel and she is the eldest of the twelve sisters. The whole family goes into mourning for a year, after finding out that their mother died giving birth to the twelfth child. Azalea steps into the role as leader and surrogate-parent to her sisters after their mother's death. The sisters start to feel suffocated by all the restrictions, especially the one on dancing, which was their favourite pastime. The King goes off to war right after the funeral, leading the girls to wonder if he even loves them.

Azalea discovers a secret passage with a staircase leading downwards at the bottom they find a forest of silver trees and a pavilion full of enchanted dancers. The owner of the pavilion introduces himself as the Keeper, and he allows the princesses to dance to their hearts' content and invites them to return every night until mourning is over. Every night the girls dance so much that they wear through their slippers. They're often tired in the morning and late to lessons and breakfast, and constantly stitching up their tattered shoes. Azalea eventually realizes that their belongings are going missing and that Keeper has been stealing from them and refuses to give their things back until they find the magic object that's keeping him confined within the walls of the castle.

The novel is slow paced. Azalea is a determined teenager after her mother's death, trying to look after her siblings. The siblings have a good relationship with each other, but their relationship with their father becomes strained when he leaves to go to war, making the sisters think that he doesn't love them. I found some of the romances cute, like the relationship between Azalea and Lord Bradford, where he stands by her side to help her when she is trying to defeat the keeper, even though they both know that she will have no say in who she marries, as parliament will choose the future king/ her husband. The novel was a good retelling that I enjoyed, I gave the novel a 3/5 stars.

Entwined is a re-telling of the Brothers Grimms fairy tale The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Not being familiar with the fairy tale myself I started Entwined only to stop midway through the first chapter to read the Bros Grimms version. The fairy tale is of twelve princesses who loved to dance and would escape to an enchanted world every night. They danced and danced until their dancing shoes were worn right through. The king, not knowing where they would go at night, hired a few knights to find out where they went. Many failed but one succeeded and was given the oldest princess's hand in marriage as a reward.

Heather Dixon took the above and created an entire world all of her own. Entwined was unique, creative, dark, full of intrigue and flowed very much like a fairy tale. In fact I had to keep reminding myself of this because I'm not used to this kind of flow in a book. All of the characters were likable and well developed. Dixon managed to give each of them a unique and consistent voice which had to be hard being that she had to give eleven of the twelve sisters a voice, the king a voice, and all the many people who manned and visited the castle throughout a year a voice. Oh and Keeper too! She did it though. She also took care to build a magical world that made sense, where everything fell into place, naturally.

I really did enjoy this story a lot. Please note... this is not a Disney fairy tale. This definitely had the feel of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. There is definitely a difference between those two but don't get it twisted... this is definitely a Dixon fairy tale. She owned it.

Since one of my all time favorite fairy tale re-boots is Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing, I could just not get into this book. I couldn't (or didn't want) to love the characters and it just fell flat for me. Go read Wildwood and let me know if you think I am up in the night.

Wow. I honestly didn't think it would be this good when I started it. It's totally Chick-lit, but keeps you reading! There's more real action/suspense than I first expected, too. Even though I don't usually use words like this, the best word I could use to describe this book would be delightful.