NerdyBirdie

Hi guys, I hope you all are having a great day so far! For those of you doing exams, hope you did well! This is my review to Heather Dixon’s Entwined which is a stand-alone novel.

This book is about twelve princesses all named in alphabetical order who love to dance. They practically live for dancing. It’s like how all of us here cannot live a day without reading—but for these princesses, it’s dancing. Azalea’s mother dies during a ball, and Azalea finds out the next morning. After her mother dies, it is time to mourn (in this case her mourning lasts for one full year). This means, the twelve princesses cannot dance for one whole year. (For those of you, who don’t appreciate dancing; try thinking about not being able to read for one whole year). Azalea finds herself pressured and trapped because she is meant to find a suitor to be King as she is to be Queen, and her mother died, and now she cannot do what she loves most. They discover a secret passage in which a man who “runs” or looks over the place is called Keeper. And he allows them to dance in his magical forest every night. Until the princesses began to realize . . . the Keeper likes to keep things (hehe, totally taken from description of the book because this line is what made me get it).

This book was very slow. I have to admit, I liked the story but this was very slow. I felt kind of let-down, even. After the first hundred pages, I was ready to s l o w l y finish this one. But, I forced myself to read this as a regular-paced book. There were many problems I found in the beginning.

One: Azalea’s mom is dead for barely a month, and suddenly the princesses start talking about how they can’t dance, and their whole goal in life is to effing dance while their mother is dead. Like . . . wait for at least a little while! I’m not saying that they should stop living, but if someone who is very close to you passes away, the most common reaction is to not think of your favorite hobby first thing.

Two: the writing. It’s not common, and it only happened twice in the whole story, but when it happened the first time, I didn’t really like the style.

Nearly an hour later, when the tower chimed eight and guests filled the ballroom like brightly colored bouquets, and perfumes and nutmeg and pine scented the air, and the Christmas trees in the corner glimmered and sparkled with glass ornaments, Azalea found herself clasped on the arm of Prime Minister Fairweller.

Now, this happened a couple of times in 472 pages, so there wasn’t much to worry about. But, I still didn’t like this bit.

Three: “Oh, yes!” piped the other girls. “We haven’t had a crumb to eat, not a crumb crumb crumb!”

BUT after around 200 pages, I started to finally get into the story, and I started to finally get creeped out. So thankfully the second half of the book did not disappoint.

The action, the creepiness, all made up for it! I’m not going to spoil the second half, because I definitely think that it was worth reading.

I would recommend this to people who like The Twelve Dancing Princesses myth, but, the first half is very slow. The second half does not disappoint! So give this book a try, sometime! Hope you all have a great day, and thanks for reading!