Full review at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books 
 Sleeping Beauty is a difficult story. By its very nature, it has a LOT of consent issues, and the straight up rape of a sleeping woman who then gives birth to one or two babies without waking is a commonality in the earliest versions of the tale. Even if you have a version with no rape, and discount the inherent ickiness of "kiss a random sleeping woman" aspect, it's also a very passive tale for the princess. She lives, she is hidden away, she is never given any input into what her life should be, and then she pricks her finger and then she's just a MacGuffin for the Prince who gets to slay the dragon. 
 What Braswell does here is take the story of Sleeping Beauty - specifically the Disney animated version, and ask the question first, what if True Love's Kiss didn't work they thought it would? What if Aurora didn't wake up? And second, what if Aurora was an active agent in her own rescue? 
 I really liked this, and I devoured it. The story explores and targets the bullshit inherent in the Sleeping Beauty story, and it serves as main points of discussion and contention within the narrative. Aurora gets to say, "Wait a fucking second, here. Let me lay out all of this. Can you not see that this is bullshit? Why would you make this my life? COULDN'T YOU THINK OF ANYTHING BETTER?" She gets to be angry. She gets to make her own choices, even when everyone around her is trying to make them for her. 
 Here, Sleeping Beauty wakes up and becomes the heroine she always could be. 
 - Redheadedgirl