Take Advantage Of Entwined Devised By Heather Dixon Wallwork Displayed As Print

liked Azalea and her sisters, and by the end I felt for the king as well, I hated his treatment of his daughters at the start, but the story attempts to show growth, Was it enough I'm not sure, I liked the love interest and the romance, The villain was a good villain, The climax got a little spooky,

As for a retelling, I felt this was a pretty run of the mill fairytale world, The world and magic felt pretty generic, It stuck pretty closely to the original tale in a lot of ways, fleshing out descriptions and characters, and adding a backstory and source of conflict,

I think if you like 'close' retellings and fairytale worlds, you would enjoy this!

Potential triggers: Pervy old man suitors, death of mother.
Entwined is a retelling of the fairy tale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” in which the Kings twelve daughters slip away to a mysterious underground realm every night and dance their slippers to ribbons.
Heather Dixon chooses to focus mainly on one sister as the heroine: Azalea, the eldest,

At the beginning of the book, the Queen dies giving birth to the twelfth princess, Azalea and her sisters are heartbroken, and to make things worse, their stiffnecked father the King pushes them away in his own grief, He also decrees that the entire family will be in mourning for a year, which means no dancing, Then the girls discover a magical secret passage that leads to a beautiful place where they can dance every night for a price,

The theme of grief is threaded throughout the novel, and the villain and his realm will send a chill down your spine, but Entwined is not relentlessly grim.
Dixon fills the tale with enough warmth, whimsy, and humor that I think it would make a good Disney movie, The badtempered tea set and helpful candleholder are just begging to be animated!

The greatest strength of Entwined is the characterization, I am not surprised to learn from Goodreads that Dixon comes from a large family, because She, Nails. It. The love the occasional annoyances siblings being mistaken for one another and the noise! Azalea is seldom far from the sound of sisterly chatter, With so many sisters, its probably impossible for an author to make them all equally memorable, but Dixon tries valiantly and does succeed in making several of them jump off the page.
The King is a fantastically layered character we can see that he really does love the girls even as its also quite clear why they think he doesnt, Then there are the love interests each of the three oldest princesses has one, Theyre adorable. Theyre exactly the kind of love interest Id like to see more of in young adult fiction, Theyre “normal guys” the only immortal stalker here is the villain but theyre far from bland each of these young men has a distinct, quirky personality and is perfect for the girl he loves.


Dixon does a great job of giving the girls an obsession with dance without making them seem frivolous, This isnt about them wanting to party, Dancing is both a coping mechanism and a discipline for these girls, For Azalea, its bound up with the princessly virtues of poise and deportment, and shes determined to teach her sisters what their mother taught her, When she was in danceteacher mode, I kept expecting Azalea to say “Spitspot” in Julie Andrews voice,

The climax in which the good guys face the villain may actually be the weakest part of the novel, First, Azalea makes a decision that just doesnt make any sense to me when she knows she still needs to rescue her sisters, Then, there are a couple of dei ex machina and a “lesson” for Azalea that rubbed me the wrong way, It feels like she is asked to shoulder too much of the blame for the estrangement between father and daughters, Yes, she lashed out in pain, but the King made plenty of mistakes too,

These scenes occur close enough to the end that I finished Entwined in a critical mood, but when I awoke the next morning, the aspects I found myself still thinking about were the characterizations and the wonderful relationships between the girls and their father, between the girls and their gentlemen, and among the girls themselves.
The more I thought about these, the more the book began to impress me in retrospect, Entwined is worth reading by any lover of retold fairy tales, I recommend it to fans of Gail Carson Levines Ella Enchanted and Robin McKinleys Beauty, with the caveat that the villains creepiness makes Entwined somewhat scarier than either of the above.
Before Mother died, Azalea promised she would take care of her sisters,

A promise that means standing up to the King, Demanding that he not forget them, And when he doeswhen he insists on going off war without even saying “goodbye”it means something else,

Breaking the rules, Taking the girls down through the silver forest to the magic pavilion where they can dance, And forget they are wearing black and that their father doesnt love them and that they dont even have a decent portrait of Mother,

But in the attempt to save her sisters, Azalea may have destroyed them all,

I admired Azaleas determination, especially after her mothers death, And I liked her younger sister Brambles spunky personality, As well as the atrocious Lord Teddie, the detestable Fairweller, and poor mistaken Mr, Bradford, who thinks hes going to escape politics,
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Entwined by Heather Dixon is a retelling of the fairy tale The Twelve Dancing Princesses, The story is told from the point of view of the oldest princess Azalea, When Azalea's mother dies and her father the king leaves and goes off to war Azalea and her sisters are in morning and while in morning they are not allowed to dance.
The girls find a secret passageway and make their way to a dance floor where they can dance unseen, The girls go every night to dance and eventually find out that everything isn't as simple as it seems,


I loved this book, I was a little unsure at first because it was HUGE the finished product will be almostpages, however the author did a fantastic job of pacing the story and providing interesting details to make for a

magical book.
I was engaged and interested throughout the book and to the very end, The girls are all named for flowers and their names are in alphabetical which makes it easy for a forgetful reader to know which sister is which and the author did a fantastic job making each character different in a book with such a huge cast of characters.
I was thrilled with the perspective of the oldest sister instead of the man who solves the mystery as is usually told and the trips to the woods were very well explained and logical.



Appropriateness: Aside from a little scariness there was nothing in this book that readers would find objectionable, The book is very long and very detailed and the heroine is in her late teens and thinking about marriage so I would put the interest age atwith a note that younger readers who are interested in the story and not intimidated by the length would also enjoy the book.




Readers who are interested in the tale The Twelve Dancing Princess will also enjoy Princess of Glass by Jessica Day George, There is also a rendition of the story in Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre: The Complete Collection although the soldier is really creepy and the sisters are somehow all the same age that is available instantly though netfilx.




copy obtained from Amazon Vine

sitelink blogspot Azalea, is the eldest of the twelve princess, it is up to her to look after her sisters when their mothers dies, She makes this promise to her her mother, a promise on silver, an oath, After the death of her mother, her father,the king has to go off to war and they are confined in the palace for a year, in mourning, The palace, which was once owned by an evil king, had enchanted the whole place, Some things still held there magic, even after the palace was disenchanted, A tea pot and sugar tongs, secret passage ways that need to be opened with silver, It is in one of these passages that they discover the silver forest, the dancers and The Keeper, He invites them to come whenever they like, to dance, Every night, all twelve princess go through the passage to dance in the magic, But all things come with a price,

I really liked Entwined, As I was reading I felt as if I knew this story, Then it hit me, I was reading a story I had already knew because it was retelling of the Brother Grimms The Twelve Dancing Princess In which every night the princess head out to dance but no one knows where.
So the king asks men to come from all over the land to see if they can figure out where his daughters go to at night, and the one who does gets to wed the princess of his choice.
Except this version of the fairy tale is much much darker and twisted,
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