Grim

A book of retold fairy tales by well-known young adult authors (including Jackson Pierce, Malinda Lo, Julie Kagawa, and Tessa Gratton). Honestly, there are only s many ways you can retell fairytales, but enough of them were engaging and fun to make it a worthwhile read: “Figment”, a retelling of Puss in Boots, fore-fronted the necessity for humans to make their own way, sometimes to the detriment of their fairytale helpers. Malinda Lo's “The Twelfth Girl”, a retelling of the Twleve Dancing Princesses casts one princess in the role of the hero/soldier and tasks her with breaking the spell. “Beauty and The Chad” is about as ridiculous as it sounds, but was a fun story, starry the Beast as a frat boy pulled into a fairytale world without permission.

Most short story collections have a tendency to be a bit uneven, and this one is no different (“Before The Rose Bloomed” by Ellen Hopkins and “The Pink” by Amanda Hocking both stood out as less than stellar submissions), but on the whole it's was a solid offering and most of the authors did well by the book.