Review: Grim, The Anthology
I received this book for free from the mentioned source in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book nor the content of my review.
Grim by Amanda Hocking, Christine Johnson, Claudia Gray, Ellen Hopkins, Jackson Pearce, Jeri Smith Ready, Jon Skrovan, Julie Kagawa, Kimberly Derting, Malinda Lo, Myra McEntire, Rachel Hawkins, Sarah Rees-Brennan, Saundra Mitchell, Shaun David Hutchinson, Sonia Gensler, Tessa Gratton
Published by: Harlequin on 3/1/2014
Genres: Anthologies, Fantasy & Magic, Paranormal, YA, Young Adult
Pages: 304
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley
View on: Goodreads
Grab it: Amazon
Review Score:
About the Book:Inspired by classic fairy tales, but with a dark and sinister twist, Grim contains short stories from some of the best voices in young adult literature today: Ellen Hopkins Amanda Hocking Julie Kagawa Claudia Gray Rachel Hawkins Kimberly Derting Myra McEntire Malinda Lo Sarah Rees-Brennan Jackson Pearce Christine Johnson Jeri Smith Ready Shaun David Hutchinson Saundra Mitchell Sonia Gensler Tessa Gratton Jon Skrovron
Grim is an extremely unique collection of short stories, edited by Christine Johnson. The stories are twists on the fairy tales that many of us grew up with, such as The Snow Queen and Beauty and the Beast. Several authors contributed to Grim including Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank and many other young adult novels, Amanda Hocking, author of The Hollows series, and Julie Kagawa, author of the Iron Fey series.
Since Grim is a collection of short stories, I can’t really get into plot and characters, but I can tell you that all of the stories wove really well together. There are some stories that are obviously based on fairy tales, such as “Beauty and the Chad” which is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast written by Sarah Rees Brennan, while other stories didn’t strike me as strictly being from any specific fairy tale such as “Figment” a story that is told from the point of view of a good luck charm, written by Jeri Smith-Ready. Whether they were original, or a retelling of an older tale, all of the stories were written extremely well and had interesting plots that kept me reading.
One of my favorites was “A Real Boy” by Claudia Gray, author of the Evernight series. It’s an adaptation of Pinocchio, but set in a futuristic society where we create robots that are designed to do certain jobs. So rather than it being a wooden boy, it’s a robot boy. There are no fairies involved; instead our main character is a girl who goes by the nickname Blue. Modern twists on classic fairy tales such as this are found throughout the entire collection, and I found them all to be really good adaptations.
One thing that kind of bothered me a little (and it is a little) is that there are two adaptations of Beauty and the Beast. I loved both of the stories, and they were both different enough that they weren’t redundant, it’s just that it was the only fairy tale that was repeated twice (that I could tell) and it would have been nice to have a different story put in instead of two adaptations of the same fairy tale.
“Figment” was one of the stories that I couldn’t think of a particular fairy tale it was an adaptation of, but it was really clever. A high school boy receives a stuffed animal from his father who has passed away, and the boy soon discovers he can communicate with the cat. The cat can bring good luck to those that believe in it, and the dynamic between the cat and the boy was entertaining to read about.
“The Raven Princess” by Jon Skovron was another really good one. If it was an adaptation of a fairy tale, then it was of one I don’t know, but the story was set in a fairy tale type world, which was nice to read about. A princess is cursed accidentally by her mother to become a raven. Because accidental curses happen on occasion.
Overall, I give Grim 4 out of 5 controllers. Really great stories by some fantastic authors, but I wish there would only have been one Beauty and the Beast adaptation.
My Rating