If ever a book screamed "read me", this book would be one of them. I have to say one thing about Harlequin Teen, they know how to package a book to where you just can't help but want to run your fingers over the cover and peek inside to see what its pages hold. This has to be ones of their best efforts so far, as this is a handsome hardback with a nice ribbon bookmarker sewn into it. I don't always compliment a book on how it's bound, but they really put an effort into it and it shows. It makes me feel a little bit bad that after posting all that glowing praise, I have to go into what I didn't like about the collection. 
 To put it bluntly, Grim suffers from your typical anthology mishaps. There are some pieces that stand out as stellar work, but there are also some that sort of stumble a little, and then there are the ones that just seem to fall flat. I think that my disappointment in these were heightened by the knowledge that the three I disliked the most were by people who are extremely talented. 
 First, let me highlight the ones that were just amazing. Untethered by Sonia Gensler, Light it Up by Kimberly Derting, and Better by Shaun David Hutchinson were by far the two that stood out the most among all of the stories in this book. I'm not entirely sure which Grimm tale Untethered was based on, but it was a rather short and sweet story about sibling love and the power of acceptance and moving on. Light it Up modernizes the tale of Hansel & Gretel, and while I can see where it might not be to everyone's tastes, I really loved how this unfolded. It really just had this great punch to it. SDH adapted the Pied Piper story in Better, and it's so deliciously twisted that I can't help but crow about it. These three were the shining gems of the collection, although there were many that I did enjoy. The Pink has to be one that I did enjoy, although there will likely be some disappointed by how closely it stuck to the source material. 
 As far as the others go, there were only a few that I actively disliked and only one that I truly had trouble finishing. The others were mostly hampered by page length, as it's hard to put a new twist on a fairy tale and stay within a specific page length. Many of them were good, but would be amazing if they were allowed to turn them into a novella or full book. 
 However the ones that stumbled, stumbled fairly badly, at least in my opinion. I was disappointed by Before the Rose Bloomed by Ellen Hopkins, who chose to tell the story in poetic verse. This would probably have worked if it'd been read aloud, but it just didn't seem to really work in written form and at times I felt that the story suffered because Hopkins was trying too hard to work out the verse. I was slightly disappointed with The Raven Princess, as at times Jon Skovron seemed to fall into the "our ____ are Different" trap a little too much. I liked the idea and perhaps with a bit more breathing room it could have worked, but it just didn't play out well in the very short page space. It's incredibly, incredibly hard to write a full story in 20-30 pages or less, after all. 
 However nothing will be as bad as Beauty and the Chad. I can see where Sarah Rees Brennan was going for. I think it was supposed to be a meeting of Grimm and National Lampoon or CollegeHumor, but it just didn't work. It had to have been my least favorite story of the book. I think most of it was that it just tried a little too hard at points to drive home the "what if the beast had been a frat boy" joke, which came at the expense of me actually caring about whether the two found love or if the magic china and flatware hurtled themselves at the characters' faces like they were Roadrunner trying to outrun Wiley Coyote. I know others liked this story, so I think this will be something you'll either love or hate. 
 Overall, this was still a fun anthology and while for some it'll be something to get at the library, it's still well worth checking out to see how established and popular authors approach the earlier works. Not all of them were based on Grimm stories, but they were all still fun when it comes down to it. 
 (ARC provided by Amazon Vine)