Review Detail

I was quite disappointed with Stealing Snow. Usually, I adore retellings, especially those with an interesting twist, but in this novel there was a clash of so many fairy-tale retellings, I couldn't wrap my head around anything. It was an amalgamation of The Snow Queen, Snow White, Frozen and Alice in Wonderland. The novel suffered from a lack of world-building. In fact, the author seemed to expect the reader to have a prior knowledge of fairy-tales so, therefore, doesn't bother to develop her world.

There was magic, thieves, witches and snow queens -- all fun and interesting book elements. However, all of these amazing aspects did not fuse together successfully which made for an awkward and disappointing read.

I did not like Snow. I found her a contradictory character. Stealing Snow could have gone down in YA history for featuring a mentally-ill princess, but the worst thing Snow ever did in the asylum was simply biting people. I don't like the implications this has for people who actually suffer from a mental illness. I feel like this makes light of their troubles by suggesting that someone who bites people and walked through a mirror is mentally ill. I'm all for diverse protagonists but it was executed so poorly here.

Unfortunately, the writing was below sub-par. Snow's commentary was ridiculously sarcastic and reminded me so much of Ten's inner monologue from "Firstlife." It was also very irritating when Snow continually recapped a scene that occurred a page earlier. The novel also focused on a lot novel cliches: a twin, good character was actually evil the whole time, the supposed evil character was actually being controlled, etc.

The romance was very confusing. Instead of a love triangle, we find Snow in a love square. Love triangles are terrible even when developed by a seasoned writer. But a love triangle mixed in with a confusing and poor-written story? Then adding in that extra love character? I am not usually this harsh in reviews but my patience reached its limits in Stealing Snow.

Unfortunately, Stealing Snow was a poorly constructed novel that could have had a lot of potential if the author didn't focus so much on mixing fairy-tales and instead developed her own original world and didn't rely so heavily on cliches.