** spoiler alert ** 
 " If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless... You probably won't understand... " -- Michael Ende. 
 So the above quote pretty much expresses how I'm feeling right now. 
 Oh. My. GAWD. I loved this book so much -- and it was such a surprise! Mainly because this book has gotten a lot of bad reviews and I have read a lot of lousy Snow White retellings that disappointed me BEFORE... 
 But WOWIE, this one just floored me. Basically, it's the story of Snow White reset in Miami Florida. And everything I found lacking in Snow in Summer (a fairly recent take on Snow White set in the Appalachian mountains) was NOT lacking in this one. This was in so many ways just the sort of book I've been looking for without even QUITE knowing this was what I wanted. 
 I loved Celine and Goose (Snow White and the Dwarf); they were both such brilliant characters with wildly entertaining POVs, and I shipped them so hard I began to feel certain they were doomed (most times when I really start shipping something in any given fandom, it falls apart/flat out never happens in canon; my love for my OTPs seems to be the kiss of death), but then that PLOT TWIST. 
 It was exactly what I wanted, but was so scared I wasn't going to get. 
 I was so worried it was going to go for the usual crappy YA drivel cop-out where the dorky friend of the beautiful girl finds somebody else at the last minute and is just like "go with the handsome dude, it's okay," and to be honest, I was pretty peeved at the thought because HELLO Celine and Goose actually had a CONVERSATION, IN CANONBOOK!UNIVERSE, about why this trope SUCKS. 
 I was so afraid I was going to end up hating the book for this, I wouldn't read the end for eight hours until I calmed down some. 
 Anyway, with the plot-twist I so desperately wanted having happened, I can freely say that not only is this one of my favorite books, but that were I to list my choice for top five best novels I've ever read, this one would have a darn good chance of being on it (and I don't say that lightly, putting it near the likes of East, Betwixt and Between, The Thirteenth Tale, and Here Lies Arthur!) 
 Alex Flinn's writing really shines here. My one problem with Beastly being that it wasn't really "new" just the same story we all knew updated, no twist (to be fair, it didn't NEED one like this one did, but still), and while I've always found her fun punchy prose and witty dialogue to be gripping, I never thought of getting into any of her other books after Beastly (which I enjoyed moderately as a teen); Mirrored has convinced me that may have been a big mistake. 
 Much like I could picture the apartment building Kyle lived in in Beastly almost perfectly, I could picture the settings in Mirrored so vividly. I could just SEE Goose's house, Celine's bunk in Isabella's room, them taking Selfies at Target with Willow, the bag of mangoes, the scary train station where Goose was so scared of heights.... I just felt like I was THERE, watching it all happen, biting my nails with fear. It has been SO long since I read a book that REALLY made me feel that to this level of intensity. It's books like this that remind me why I fell in love with books/fairytales in the first place. 
 And I have to say, I've only enjoyed a Snow White retelling this much THREE times in my entire life. I'm not even kidding. 1) When I was, maybe, twelve, staying home from school eating an ice cream, watching Kristin Kreuk in the titular role; 2) when I was sixteen, reading Gail Carson Levine's Fairest under the table at breakfast with my family and their friends; and 3) last November when I bought myself a big ol' chocolate cake and watched Snow White: a Tale of Terror on DVD in my PJs. 
 Of course, no book is perfect (except for East by Edith Pattou, MAYBE -- yeah, I'm still doing that), and there were a few issues I had with Mirrored, much as I loved it. 
 1) Violet. 
 Do I even need to elaborate here? Yeah? Okay. It's not that she's a bad villain, she actually really works well as the villain, what doesn't work is that I'm supposed to feel sorry for her? 
 Okay, so she was bullied as a kid (her and a million other girls out there, pal!); that don't make her some entitled special snowflake who can set animals on people and steal their husbands. 
 Sure, Jennifer was really mean, but she was also clearly a good wife and mother when she grew up (she went to the zoo to be with her daughter, despite her rabid fear of animals! That's love right there! And there's no indication she ever treated Greg poorly or cheated on him or anything), and Violet literally KILLS her with a monkey IN FRONT OF HER EIGHT YEAR OLD DAUGHTER. That is so messed up... So unbelievably messed up. 
 I think I knew from the moment Violet ripped off that ballerina from that music box to get a better look at her face in the mirror I was going to hate her, and I was right. And I don't think she deserved almost a hundred pages worth of a POV either. We didn't need to see EVERY moment she obsessed over Greg or stewed over not having friends at school, a few would have done fine. You know what would have GREAT? If she had maybe FIFTY pages of POV, and the other fifty of the 80s part of the novel was from JENNIFER'S POV. I would have loved to find out how she felt about the dog attack, if she really fell in love with Greg despite initially dating him out of spite... 
 My biggest problem with Violet, too, is that while other characters who don't deserve it as much (coughcough Jennifer coughcough) meet gruesome ends, she DOESN'T. Which means there is no dramatic confrontation between her and a re-awakened Celine. I know she was all happy and in love and crap and that Violet's ego/faith was struck a blow by seeing that her stepdaughter really could love a dwarf, etc... but let's think about this for a sec... VIOLET KILLED HER MOTHER. That warrants some swearing and hairpulling and punch throwing between these characters, don't you think? 
 I just kept imagining that scene in "Snow White: Tale of Terror" where Lilli goes all dramatically, "You have no heart," and her stepmother replies, "No, that's too simple"; I really really wanted something in the vein of that at the end of this book, instead everyone's all happy and la-de-da from the get-go. I would have even settled for a final conversation PERIOD between Celine and Violet after Celine wakes up. Even if it was just "I forgive you," or whatever. 
 2) This one's a bit silly, but there is a line that goes, "wearing a hat, like a Jehovah's Witness" and all I could do was laugh. I literally had to close the book and hold my sides. Does this book take place in some kind of alternate universe where hat-wearing is the defining characteristic of Jehovah's Witnesses in field service? Or is this just a touch awkward writing in an otherwise well written book? Should the line perhaps be "Someone who looked like a Jehovah's Witness, wearing a hat"? This sentence just reads funny. I can forgive not using the proper singular term for Jehovah's Witnesses (i.e. One of Jehovah's Witnesses) because most teenagers wouldn't know to say it that way, but just that line... (shakes head and laughs, I'm going to be chuckling about this till kingdom come -- possibly literally). 
 3) Was it just me or was there a reference to another book/movie that would appeal to teens, young adults, and/or their mothers reading this book almost every other page? Some of it worked! I loved the Princess Bride bit, and the scene where Goose and Celine watch Pretty in Pink was kind of important to the theme of the novel so I let that go (plus they danced together during Ferris Bueller, how DARN CUTE is THAT?), but after a while (by the time we got to the Game of Thrones stuff, great as it was) I was beginning to feel just a smidge emotionally manipulated by the author. It's like she was just throwing callbacks in as gimmicks to keep my attention and make me like her book more. Kinda felt how Celine did when Kendra made Goose tall in that one scene; I like the novel fine the way it was BEFORE you chucked references at my head every other page, it was a good book ALL ALONG. 
 4) Aside from Isabella, we don't get to know Goose's siblings too well. There are like a ton of kids running around that house and Celine is there ALL DAY, surely we should have seen more of them, no? 
 All that said, this book has a lot of great stuff to offer. In addition to amazing characters like Celine and Goose, we get Kendra (who I found more likable in this than Beastly for some reason, even if she is a bit useless in parts), and the hilariously jerky Jonah Prince (think British Justin Bieber parody, and you're on the right track) and his no-nonsense mum and funny bodyguards and ex-girlfriend Allegra -- oh and Goose's little sister Isabella, as well as his really likable parents. 
 So, in honor of how much I liked this book, I decided to do something special at the end of this review. Anyone reading this ever seen "Honest Trailers" on youtube? Well, I've decided to do a short "honest review" making a sarcastic overview of the plot/characters before I end this (take this part with a grain of salt, though, it's mostly just for fun): 
 You kinda liked Beastly, before it was made into a lousy movie starting Mary-Kate Olsen, now journey back as Kendra gives a child already on the verge of snapping because of years of emotional and physical abuse the know-how of magically hurting people and turns a blind eye for years until a fifteen year old girl winds up in a coma. Yeah, that sounds like good parenting... 
 Meet Violet, a girl who thinks the world owes her whatever she wants because she was born ugly and got bullied a lot. Read on as she obsesses creepily over the guy she had a crush on when she was in middle school; despite the fact that he makes it clear several times he doesn't want her, even marrying somebody else. She'll get her due by stalking him and killing his wife with a monkey in front of his eight year old daughter... Yikes... Dude, that's so wrong. 
 Maybe somebody should have just had an intervention with this woman and made her watch the Bollywood film Darr over and over until she got the point through her skull... G-g-greg.... 
 Meet Celine, a reclusive, beautiful girl with a dead mother and a dad and stepmother who do nothing but make out all day long. She'll deal with constant torture from burning showers and curling irons, animals magically turned against her, uncanny rashes, and other psycho witchcraft stuff that makes this book come off a lot darker than the light la-de-da prose suggests it should, all because Violet hates her for being pretty. 
 Everything will change, however, when Violet turns from abusive to flat out murderous, forcing Celine to go into hiding with her dwarf ("Little person"? Well, this is a snow white retelling so let's stick with Dwarf...) friend who -- if you really think about it -- she hasn't known all that long. I mean, seriously, she doesn't even know the guy's real name.... 
 Meet Goose, a snarky dwarf who acts like a clown so people will like him but is actually kind of horrible at what he'd rather be doing (sorry, but that "Going to Target with Her" poem was pretty bad...) so maybe he shouldn't give up on that whole smartass comedian thing just yet... 
 Gape in disbelief at the printed page as he disobeys his parents and runs off to Orlando to track down Prince Justin Bieber who he thinks is Celine's true love despite the fact they've never met and he's an idiot. Yeah, that makes sense, kind of. Wackiness will ensue as this little guy defies the odds, not to mention Disney World security, to save the girl he loves. 
 A trip that turns out to be a complete waste of time, when he could have at least TRIED kissing Celine himself BEFORE running away to Orlando, and saved everybody quite a bit of trouble.... 
 But who cares, everybody's happy and Kendra's back to adopt Celine! 
 Yay? 
 Alex Flinn's " Snow White & The One Dwarf Who Turns Out to be The Love of her Life " 
 Coming to a bookshelf near you! 
 An afterthought: if they make this into a movie -- and they should, because it's awesome -- I don't want Mary-Kate Olsen to reprise her role as Kendra, dash it! 
 Highly recommended!