Review: Stitching Snow

STITCHING SNOW
R.C. Lewis
Young Adult/Fairy Tale Retelling
336 pages
Disney Hyperion
Available Now
Source: BEA

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Princess Snow is missing.

Her home planet is filled with violence and corruption at the hands of King Matthias and his wife as they attempt to punish her captors. The king will stop at nothing to get his beloved daughter back-but that's assuming she wants to return at all.

Essie has grown used to being cold. Temperatures on the planet Thanda are always sub-zero, and she fills her days with coding and repairs for the seven loyal drones that run the local mines.

When a mysterious young man named Dane crash-lands near her home, Essie agrees to help the pilot repair his ship. But soon she realizes that Dane's arrival was far from accidental, and she's pulled into the heart of a war she's risked everything to avoid.

MY THOUGHTS
Stitching Snow is a beautiful combination of serious and sweet, moments full of lightness and levity alternating with darkness and gravity to keep us riveted to the pages from beginning to end. Ms. Lewis’s version of Snow White is no damsel in distress, instead she's a young women with smarts, technological know-how, and an ability to fight down and dirty when the situation calls for it. In place of dwarfs Essie is surrounded by drones of her own making, each with a distinct personality (especially Dimwit and Cusser – both hilariously aptly named) that adds both poignancy and humor as Essie finds her way back home to reclaim and rebuild.

Essie is a joy of a heroine, the dark past that drove her to Thanda something that defines who’s she’s become but yet she never lets it be all that does so. She resolves to never go down without a fight, even if it’s one she knows she can’t win, and we can’t help but situate ourselves firmly in her corner and refuse to budge. When the truth about Dane is revealed, her anger matches our own, but instead of lashing out and seeking to cause the same harm his deception has caused her, she simply grants herself permission to feel as she does without taking those feelings out on anyone else. She’s understandably wary of Dane for majority of the book, but she doesn’t hold a grudge or allow herself to be so blinded by what he’s done to her that she can’t understand the why’s of his decisions, and thus the broken trust between them creates a stunningly tense foundation for their eventual romance.

The romance itself is exceedingly well done, moving at the perfect pace given trust is not an easy thing to rebuild once it’s been destroyed, and by the time Dane actually makes his first move our anger at him has receded along with Essie’s. Just when the two of them find themselves on more solid footing with one another however, they’re thrust back into the nightmare Essie escaped from all those years ago, facing monsters of the human variety who show us that a poisoned apple from an old hag is nothing compared to what the royal house of Windsong is capable of.
 
Overall, Ms. Lewis delights with her retelling of Snow White and her seven companions, giving us true villains to hate and flawed heroes to root for, all the while charming us with enough silly banter between Essie and her drones and romance between reluctant royals to keep the darkness from overwhelming. Entertaining every step of the way, Stitching Snow should be on everyone’s must-read list.

Rating: 4/5

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This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.