** spoiler alert ** 
 Let me just say, overall, this book had a really good story to it. It was a better Snow White than a LOT of (pardon my French) really, REALLY crappy adaptions I've read recently. 
 That said, I was a little disappointed in it. Melanie Dickerson is clearly an AMAZING writer, but she didn't do as well on this as The Golden Braid in my opinion. 
 Largely my beef has to do with a) her repetitiveness. The novel repeats itself. Like a lot. I feel the story would have wrapped up much sooner if the characters stopped thinking in great detail about facts we as the readers already KNOW. It was just over the top. And b) THE LAMEST VILLIAN EVER. I could understand Gothel's motivation in The Golden Braid and, even so, hated her and rooted for the heroes to win (which is the mark of a great villain, if you really hate them AND they are an ACTUAL threat in the plot). Snow White's (Sophie's) stepmother was just LAUGHABLE. HOW is this woman such a threat? Okay, so she kills EVERYONE who crosses her and doesn't let visitors into her little house of horrors. HELLO, she doesn't let ANYONE IN, which means any number of servants could have teamed up, killed her, and then been all, "Oh no, poor Duchess took sick in the night, oh wells, I guess we'd better give the throne over to Sophie... Duchess ain't getting any deader." And EVERYTHING would have been solved. Who would say otherwise? Even the duchess's lovers seemed pretty disgusted by her... So um, yeah. 
 That aside, I really liked Gabe and Sophie, they were very sweet, raw characters. They did border on sueishness here and there, and I never connected to them the way I did to Rapunzel and her knight, but that's okay, I liked them enough to keep reading and see how things worked out. 
 So this is a good book, but it doesn't make my favorites because there were a few areas of the plot that just annoyed me a little TOO much to add it. 
 Still recommended, though, and I hope to read more of this author in the future.