Review: Entwined

Entwined by Heather Dixon

Genre: YA

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Goodreads Says: Azalea and her younger sisters dance in the mysterious silver forest every night, escaping from the sadness of the palace and their father’s grief. What they don’t understand—although as time passes they begin to get an inkling of the danger they are in—is that the mysterious and dashing Keeper is tightening his snare with deadly purpose. Luckily, Azalea is brave and steadfast. Luckily, a handsome young army captain also has his eye on Azalea. . . . Lush, romantic, and compelling, this debut novel by Heather Dixon will thrill fans of Shannon Hale, Robin McKinley, and Edith Pattou.

Audio Book

Entwined is a re-telling of the Brothers Grimms fairy tale The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Not being familiar with the fairy tale myself I started Entwined only to stop midway through the first chapter to read the Bros Grimms version. The fairy tale is of twelve princesses who loved to dance and would escape to an enchanted world every night. They danced and danced until their dancing shoes were worn right through. The king, not knowing where they would go at night, hired a few knights to find out where they went. Many failed but one succeeded and was given the oldest princess’s hand in marriage as a reward.

Heather Dixon took the above and created an entire world all of her own. Entwined was unique, creative, dark, full of intrigue and flowed very much like a fairy tale. In fact I had to keep reminding myself of this because I’m not used to this kind of flow in a book. All of the characters were likable and well developed. Dixon managed to give each of them a unique and consistent voice which had to be hard being that she had to give eleven of the twelve sisters a voice, the king a voice, and all the many people who manned and visited the castle throughout a year a voice. Oh and Keeper too! She did it though. She also took care to build a magical world that made sense, where everything fell into place, naturally.

I really did enjoy this story a lot. Please note… this is not a Disney fairy tale. This definitely had the feel of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. There is definitely a difference between those two but don’t get it twisted… this is definitely a Dixon fairy tale. She owned it.




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