Receive Winters Child: A Retelling Of The Snow Queen Formulated By Cameron Dokey Volume

very dangerous to utter a wish and curse at the same time,

Well, let me get the obvious out of the way first Ive never read or heard of the Winter Child fable before reading this story, so that in and of itself probably accounts for me going into the book with zero expectations.


Overall, I enjoyed it, There were some good lessons infused in the story and the characters kept my interest the entire time, I do agree with my fellow readers that the ending felt too convenient, but I wasnt really annoyed by the fact that everyone got their HEA.
I would have liked to have known more about Constantine because his part seemed shoved in at the final hour as a plot twist to deliver one final happy ending, but again I wasn't annoyed.
Apparently, there were some inconsistencies, but again having no previous exposure to the fable, I was mildly entertained,

Cute short story that held my attention for the few short hours it took to read, Cameron creates a whole new way of looking at the story of the Snow Queen, while keeping the spirit of the original story.
This story will draw you in from the very beginning, and you wont be able to put it down until the very end.
This book will make you fall in love with the tale of the Snow Queen all over again!,stars. A retelling of the Snow Child, a story that I was not familiar with, but I loved this, It was magical and whimsical, with just the right balance of twists and turns and happy endings, More accurately, Kai says he wishes to marry Grace not that he declares his love to her, Neither declares their lovethough Kai accuses Grace of not loving him enough, I always eagerly look forward to each new 'Once Upon a Time' story from Simon and Schuster aside from the well known tales there have been lesser known fairy tales and legends that have gotten spotlighted.
When I heard about this one, by Dokey who I have admired for a while, I knew it had to be about the Snow Queen.
I suggest heading over to SurLaLune Fairy Tales to read up quickly about the original tale before moving onwards here.


Dokey's rendition of Hans Christian Anderson's lesser known fairy tale The Snow Queen keeps pace well with the original tale, but adds flavor to it to attract new readers.
This isn't to say that she follows the story completely and this may yet be one of the farthest from the outcome of the original tale yet to come in this serial of novels.


Like the original tale Dokey splits the story itself into fragments to follow after one or more of the protagonists of the story.
Each 'part' is told in first person point of view from either Kai, Grace or Deidre the Winter Child's perspectives and they weave in and out of each other companionably.
The short nature of the novel cuts down on a lot of the adventure and spirit that other renditions have The Snow Queen by Mercedes Lackey is very well done in this, but it keeps the focus on what's important.
I felt the worst for Deidre, she deserved the fate handed to her not at all and she still remained light.
I would have liked more about her journey as she mended hearts, but space didn't allow for that it seemed.


Kai and Grace are so well matched you know, almost from the start, it can't be, As a romance this novel doesn't hold up its end at all there is little chemistry between any of the couples and one romance happens literally in the blink of an eye.
Grace worries over marrying Kai, who she has known all of her life literally, but then in a blink decides to marry someone else she has only just, formally, met I wanted Deidre to be happy, so the ending fit that at least, it just did not meet any other expectations.


This is one of the weaker 'Once Upon a Time' stories yet produced I think we're edging close tobooks now in the series, but I have hope for the next book in the series, Violet Eyes which is a retelling of 'The Princess and the Pea'.
Meh. Thats what this book gets, One giant “meh. ”

I was actually fairly excited about this book, because sitelinkThe Snow Queen doesn't get much love in fairytale retellings so I was interested in seeing how this book played out.


Plus, Cameron Dokey is my favorite author in the Once Upon a Time series, Actually, shes the only author I really like in that series, For me, she vacillates between funny and sweetly romantic sitelinkBeauty Sleep: A Retelling of "Sleeping Beauty", sitelinkGolden: A Retelling of "Rapunzel", sitelinkBefore Midnight: A Retelling of "Cinderella" and flat and tepid sitelinkSunlight and Shadow: A Retelling of "The Magic Flute", sitelinkBelle: A Retelling of "Beauty and the Beast", sitelinkThe Storyteller's Daughter: A Retelling of "The Arabian Nights".
This book is in the latter category,

The characters were onedimensional, The romance was nonexistent. The humor was strained. I thought Kai and Grace were going to be the canon couple, I mean, thats what happened in the original tale, But now the Snow Queen is the Winters Child a good guy and she gets with Kai, Grace gets paired with the peregrine falcon, THE FALCON! Seriously, this is how it goes:

Grace to Kai: It's totally cool with me that youre going to marry the Winters Child.
I love you, but not in the marriage kind of love, What I really love is the unknown,
Falcon: Hey, thats me!
Everyone: What the hell!! You were just a falcon! Now youre a man!
Falcon: Yep, see, I was cursed to remain a falcon until someone fell in love with me.
And by me I mean the unknown, Because Im the unknown. Because well, I dont know. Grace loves to travel. I was a bird. Birds travel. Whatever, lets get married!
Grace: Well, I just rejected Kais marriage proposal because Imand wanted to do something with my life before getting married.
But whatever! Double wedding everybody! Woohoo!

It was a total WTF moment, Also: really not romantic. Because he was a FALCON up until the lastpages of the book, Oye, Dokey, you can be better than this, I pretty much skimmed through the whole book,
The ending was a bit too perfect, Kai falls in love with Hope and said that he's always loved her, I mean, he's known her for, like what, a few weeks And then the falcon just randomly changed into a handsome dude and Grace loves him at once.
Ooooookay, a little bit of Romeo and Juliet there, . .
The love ending kinda mirrored "Midnight Pearls", another "Once Upon a Time" book, Both leading characters of the opposite sex ended up falling in love with someone else,
The only thing that relates to the original "Snow Queen" was the fact that a shard of the mirror embedded itself in someone's body parts and changed them completely.
The two main protagonists also live like right next to each other, The female protagonist also had to travel thousands of miles to save her friend, during which she has several encounters with many different people, and ends up liking him, which doesn't happen in this book but whatever.

There was never really a climax and the whole story just went from one character's point of view onto the next.

Yeah, I KNOW that this is supposed to be a retold whereas many changes are OK, but I didn't like it.

Hopefully this book falls into the hands of those who like vaguely retold fairytales,
:P I had high expectations on this book, and though I liked it, I didn't love it,

On the one hand, the writing is beautiful, especially at the beginning, The way it describes de land of ice and snow where the Winter Child was born, and how she got her name, it's truly a fairy tale narration, and I loved it! Words there just painted such a beautiful picture, that it felt like there was truly magic in them.
I loved the way it takes stories, and this one was my favourite line, look:

"Pick any time of the day or night and somewhere, everywhere, stories are being told.
They overlap and flow across one another, then pull away again just as waves do upon a shore, It is this knack that stories have of rubbing up against one another that makes the world an interesting place, a place of greater possibility than it would be if we told our tales alone.
"

It truly captured what it means to write, and how it is impossible to tell all of the stories, because each one generates another, and from them, many others start and end, like with a river and its tributaries, all of them full of possibilities if we ask ourselves "what if".


I loved the way the Winter Child is presented, with her appearance and her clothing, and the way she has to live to mend those hearts in which a sliver of her mother's ice mirror entered, healing them, and righting the wrong that will allow her to be herself again.
Not the Winter Child, but simply the princess, the girl, someone without the titles that marked her entire life, who longed to be loved by herself, to find someone who could help her heal her own heart, and finally, have a name of her own and live a life without worrying about paying for her mother's negligence.


However, I felt this book had potential characters who could have added some action to the story, but at the end, they only appeared for one chapter, and then they were gone.
Like Petra, the bandit girl, and the old lady in the forest, I think that the situations Grace lived with them could have been better developed, exploiting its potential, At least Petra taught her something useful, and she took a friend from their camp with her, the falcon, But with the old lady, she's gone as soon as she appears, Was her a witch Only a harmless, lonely old woman Or a magical creature from the forest disguised as a human being We will never know.
See what I mean

And that ending, oh, my God, I mean, Kai and Deirdre's love is beautiful, the way Kai says he has truly loved her through her story, his entire life, and always believed she could heal and be herself again.
I really wanted them to be happy together, But Grace! Her ending had me rolling my eyes, I know that in fairy tales, love grows fast, and is forever, but this was just too much, I mean, it was unexpected, yes, and I understood that Constantin truly gave his heart to Grace, because they spent a lot of time together.
But he was a falcon, and she didn't know he was actually cursed but yes, she accepted his proposal I mean, she rejected Kai, a boy she knew her entire life, but accepted a stranger who spent most of his life as a bird! That doesn't make any sense for me though I liked the fact that she could finally have a way to see what was beyond the horizon, after spending her whole life wanting to discover the world.


I did like the fact that Deirdre's heart healing didn't come from where I was expecting it, Kai's love changed her, but it wasn't his heart the one who matched hers, but Grace's, with her determination to find Kai without a path traced in front of her, who set off in the journey just as Deirdre did when she left her home to right her mother's wrong: without following a course, only putting one foot after the other, letting the road take her, instead the other way around.
That was definitely a good twist,

Overall, it's a good book, I wasn't great, but it was ok, and it's worth the reading if you like fairy tales, I will read the rest of the retellings, that's for sure!

If you like what you read, find more reviews in my blog: sitelink blogspot. com. ar/ Okay so this is a snow that stays relatively true to the Snow Queen fairy tale and for that I absolutely love it.
In the wake of some of the other "adaptations" I was worried I had found another dud,

There are so many quotes in this story that I absolutely love, And the way it stayed true to the friendship aspect of the original, just warms my heart, For me this story has never been about romance, but a friend saving a friend and all the better for it being a strong willed girl who does the saving.
this would've gotten five if the second romance hadn't been so random I really liked this book, I never thought as much but I do, The way the story was written was amazing, The bond between the Grace and Kai was sweet and bitter, I felt sorry for The Winter Child also because of such a cruel fate, And when Kai decided to leave and go with the Winter Child I was angry and was rooting for Grace to get him back.
The ending was unexpected because I wanted Kai to be with Grace but this version definitely summed up the real book which I found that I did not really like.
I tend to enjoy Dokey's reimagined fairy talesGolden was excellent and so was Before Midnight, But while the characters in Winter's Child had interesting journeys, the ending was awful! Flat, rushed, deus ex machina, and incomprehensibleit made no sense to me and left a rather bitter taste in my mouth.
I was lost for the firstpages of the book, This doesn't sound like Snow White at all! I thought, Now that was embarrassing since it clearly says on the cover "The Snow Queen", but in my defense they sound similar Snow White and Snow Queen.


Well anyways the book, The story I loved. Since I have never heard of the Snow Queen story it was all new for me, I liked Graces journey and she is a strong protagonist, Its pretty classic Dokey writing, She writes a lot about the heart, names, appearances, etc, I can always depend on Dokey to put love in,

Now the stuff that bothered me, Cheesiness is present, the same as in all her books, I have a pretty high tolerance of cheesiness but the end of the book was a bit much, It makes everything too convenient

in my opinion, The other thing that bothered me was that none of the characters seemed to really develop, I know they were supposed to because they said they learned all these new things about themselves but I didn't see it.
The Winter's Child wasn't as mature as you'd think she'd be for living so long either,

An all around good story just not Dokey's best,
My almost completed review just disappeared with an uncontrolled flick of my finger and I am too frustrated to start afresh.
So, I am just going to sprout some random points that explain why I do not recommend the book and why I won't try to read anything else by the author in the future:

The book is really short that is reason why I finished reading the book after all, even for a fairytale retelling.
Unfortunately that does not mean that the arc of suspense is higher angled, No. This story has no real climax and almost no plotline to speak of, Can somebody tell me why the North Wind sent the Winter Child to Grace and Kai Who was the one with the ice splinter Both Grace And when is it removed Were Kai and Grace Deidre's last stop or what

The book is fairytalelike in the original sense: a lot of moral fingerwaggling in front of the reader's face and even more perpetual output of sayings and wise surmises about life and happiness and wishes and curses and whatnot you know, the stuff that usually belongs on a handstiched kitchen towel.


The book is one slim volume of a larger series, And in my opinion it shows, It had an unpleasant offtherack bytaste, I felt like the author had the assignment to complete one fairytale retelling each fortnight,

The book has no real romance, Everyone gets his or her happilyeverafter completely out of the blue, There weren't even the of a fairy's magic wand to be admired, "Poof I am your prince, Poof tell her you love her, but be quick about it, Kneel, all of you who want to be married, A five minute slot has just been opened for you, "

The book is poorly researched, I do know that this is a fairytale retelling and no realworld place is actually mentioned by name, but I hate halfhearted pseudoresearchers.
If you are not sure, dear author, place your plot into a fantasy world and use plain English, okay Grace and Kai have Scandinavian surnames, which fits the Danish origin.
But "Grace", Grace is no Scandinavian name, If you did not like Gertrud, Mrs, Dokey, you could have searched for a softer sounding Danish name, I assure you, there are plenty, Grace speaks of her grandmother as her "oma", Oma is a German word, In Danish and Norwegian it should be "bedstemor", in Swedish it's "mormor", Well. And one last thing that came back up sour was that Kai's father worked in the coal mines and dies there.
There is almost nothing to mine in Danmark apart from some clay, some minerals and a bit of oil in the North Sea.
It would have been possible to shift the story to Germany, but then some other adaptions would have been necessary.
The random mix annoyed me a lot,

.