3.5 stars 
 Video review here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS2xk... 
 I'm having a really hard time rating this book. I adored a lot of the retellings, but some of them fell a little flat. 
 What I do love is the grittiness that Cunningham brings to these old fairy tales, and how he sets many of them in a mashup of our contemporary world and traditional fairy tale settings. I also have always been a fan of Cunningham's style, and he does not fail to deliver in this collection. His characters are complex, and he dives right in to the depths of their psyches--their failings and their deepest desires and how they truly feel about themselves and the world around them. 
 My favorite stories were really phenomenal, and I know they'll stay with me. Three of them stand out to me in particular: 
 Crazy Old Lady, a retelling of Hansel and Gretel, told through a second person point of view of the witch in the house made of candy 
 Steadfast; Tin, which reworks Andersen's story of a one-legged tin soldier and a paper ballerina and beautifully depicts all the trappings and disappointments of a contemporary marriage between two people who have lost the magic of their initial romance 
 and Beasts, which is of course a Beauty and the Beast retelling, with a very headstrong young woman playing the role of Beauty and a twisted and dark finale. 
 I have a feeling that the other stories in this collection will soon be a little bit blurry around the edges for me. I enjoyed them while reading them, but didn't find anything excessively memorable about them.