A Wicked Thing Review

A Wicked Thing by Rhiannon Thomas (337 pages)
My Rating: 3.5 Stars
Date Read: 19 December 2016

Synopsis:

Rhiannon Thomas's dazzling debut novel is a spellbinding reimagining of Sleeping Beauty and what happens after happily ever after.

One hundred years after falling asleep, Princess Aurora wakes up to the kiss of a handsome prince and a broken kingdom that has been dreaming of her return. All the books say that she should be living happily ever after. But as Aurora understands all too well, the truth is nothing like the fairy tale.

Her family is long dead. Her "true love" is a kind stranger. And her whole life has been planned out by political foes while she slept.

As Aurora struggles to make sense of her new world, she begins to fear that the curse has left its mark on her, a fiery and dangerous thing that might be as wicked as the witch who once ensnared her. With her wedding day drawing near, Aurora must make the ultimate decision on how to save her kingdom: marry the prince or run.

Rhiannon Thomas weaves together vivid scenes of action, romance, and gorgeous gowns to reveal a richly imagined world … and Sleeping Beauty as she’s never been seen before.

My Review:

A Wicked Thing is the story of Sleeping Beauty after she is woken up one hundred years after she pricks her finger on the spinning wheel. But it goes so much deeper than just being some regular old love story fairy tale.

Oh, and I'm actually giving this book a 3.5, not a 3 which I will talk about later in the review.

From this point on, there will most likely be some spoilers, so read at your own risk. If there is a major spoiler, I will put all caps right before it!

Okay, so I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would. I am usually not the biggest fan of Sleeping Beauty, she is one of the more annoying princesses and fairy tales I have read. But in this story, she is given a personality, and even more than that, a backbone! She stands up for what she believes in, doesn't take anything lying down, and even though she is in a place she neither recognizes nor feels comfortable in, she does not spend all of her time wallowing in self-pity. There are a few moments, but come on, she did just wake up to everyone she knew being dead because one hundred years had passed! I am just very impressed with how Rhiannon Thomas portrayed Aurora because she could have easily made her out to be very passive, but she saw the opportunity to make her into something more and took it! I am so proud!

The other characters, however, fell very flat for me. Not many of them stood out in any real way, and while Aurora was a very round character, everyone else felt quite stereotyped. The nagging queen, the (SPOILER) evil king, the prince who is always controlled, the innocent, the debonair and dashing male character who gives information to the heroine, the "outcast" boy who you  don't really trust but you also kind of trust at the same time, and finally the "baddie." I felt that these characters were a little too cliche for my taste, but I hope she goes into these characters and their developments a lot more in the next book, which is already out if you wanted to go pick it up!

The plot line, while quite a lot of it was fun and fresh, some of it, as stated before, was a little too cliche for my taste. I enjoyed the nods to the original story and the Disney animated story (especially with some of the character names such as Stefan). Those were fun little treats for me to find as I was reading.

There were a few moments I wished were expanded on more. THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH WILL HAVE SPOILERS SO SKIP THIS ONE AND THE NEXT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THEM! I needed there to be more explanation of how the world got to the point it did. I understand that we, as the audience, are being kept in the dark just as much as Aurora, but I wanted her to know why as well. Also, the attacks felt a little too rushed for my taste. And the moments with Tristan, for that matter. I get, yes, Aurora's falling for someone who is showing her the first bit of kindness without (as she wrongly assumes) knowing her identity, but it was almost like: "hi, I'm Tristan, you love me, btw, I'm going to show you that this city is kinda shit, expose you to the truth of the kingdom, then leave you with the knowledge that I am with a terrorist group that wouldn't necessarily mind you  being dead." That's going a little too fast for my taste, but hey, maybe it will be more explained in the next books? I'm not sure.

I am also not a fan of the queen's story line with Aurora and her daughter Isabelle. It's shady and quite ugly which I do not appreciate. And for a final bit I'm not the biggest fan of, the bits with the witch Celestine. The magic is not explained at all, neither the reasons for it nor how it actually works which is quite annoying as a person who loves understanding the "deeper" aspects of the story. I think we will get more of the magic in the next book as this one was probably setting up the rest of the story, but there was just so little information that it just felt as if it were put into the story for seemingly no reason whatsoever other than for it to be more fairy tale like. Same goes for the dragons.

Okay, spoiler section is over.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this book, enough to want to read the next one. Were there issues with it? Yes, but most of them can be overlooked because the storytelling is great and the portrayal of the main female character is very well done. If you enjoy fairy tale stories and don't mind having the story you know changed up a bit, then this is the book for you!