This book showed great promise. What is better than Snow White from the evil queen's point of view? How did she become evil? What is her back story? But from page one this was disappointing. The Queen, never, REALLY becomes evil, she loves Snow even after she kills her. This minimized the fairy tale, making it seem pretty, with beautiful sweet kind words and innocent descriptions. Showing the Queen was tricked into being evil. It lacked a harshness that the story really needed to take it from a hum drum YA novel to a powerful one. If you are going to re write a fairy tale, a) add something new, this took place in a castle in a far away land, once upon a time bullshit and b) try and maintain the feel of the original, even the Disney version had that tinge of wicked despair.