Synopsis: This book takes place in the fantasy world of Levine’s earlier book, Ella Enchanted. Aza is an orphan taken in by innkeepers, who raise and love her like a daughter. Her voice is the most beautiful in the land, so her parents say. Her face and figure, however, aren’t so pretty to look at. In fact, many inn visitors refuse to be served by her because of her ugliness, and so mostly Aza keeps to tasks that take her away from the guests’ sights. Her life changes when a duchess, who is the guest of the inn and has taken a liking to Aza, invites her to the royal wedding. The new queen, Ivi, is drawn to Aza, and eventually makes Aza her lady-in-waiting because Aza can iluse – that is, Aza can project her voice to sing for the queen, whose voice is mediocre. Ivi forces Aza to do this against her will, and when the court discovers the duplicity, Aza is thrown in the dungeon. She manages to escape to the caves of the gnomes, where she lives in exile almost until the end of the book.
Rating: Superbly brilliant
Opinion: As is obvious from the cover, this is based on the Snow White fairy tale. However, it is not just a retelling of the tale – it is a reworking of it that weaves the original elements of the tale into her original story so subtly that it is as if Snow White were being written for the first time. The pace of the storytelling is just right – it never drags or moves too quickly. The characters are exquisitely drawn, with surprising depth in Ivi. Prince Ijori is not quite as full of depth as Ivi and Aza, but he doesn’t seem to lack for it because the story is so focused on the two female characters. Much of the story focuses on Aza’s lack of beauty and her own comfort in her skin, which is interesting because most fairy tale characters are beautiful, or at least pretty. This book is definitely worth picking up – I loved it to the last page, and in fact stayed up to finish reading it because I couldn’t put it down. I think I might have to go buy my own copy. And all her other books, too.
The thing that attracted me to this book, frankly, was the cover. Isn’t it nice? From its appearance, I thought that it would be a chick lit-type book, which I enjoy, but it really wasn’t. It’s a portrait of a girl’s experience in high school, told from her point of view. She spends all of her boarding school experience on the perimeter of things, afraid to get too close to her classmates. Although Lee was outgoing and loud and pretty much totally different back home in Indiana, she becomes very self-contained and closed off at boarding school. One of the main threads is her obsession with a boy named Cross, which does not come to fruition until their senior year. He becomes something more than a crush, but isn’t quite a boyfriend. This relationship is the most poignant part of the book, because, underneath the facade, Lee wants a full, open relationship with Cross, but doesn’t ask because she tells herself that Cross would reject her. We don’t know if he would, but if that were the case, he would not be good enough for her. Lee can’t see her own worth enough to stand up for herself in the relationship.
