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Showing posts from February, 2025

Review: Ties of Starlight

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Ties of Starlight  by Celeste Baxendell  is the first ARC I've had the pleasure of reading from the upcoming Tethered Hearts series . This multi-author series features romantasy plots about couples who are brought together through magical bonds. I am fortunate enough to be on the street team for these riveting stories by many of my favorite authors. The first book will be released on March 7th, and the one I am reviewing here will come out the following week on March 14th. This book follows Celeste Baxendell's typical writing style  of couples who face terrible obstacles that test their love until they realize how much they need each other to be happy. Although I haven't read the other Tethered Hearts books yet, this will probably be one of the darker ones in the series. It is the first book that Celeste has written about elves, which she plans to expand into other books that take place in this new fantasy setting. Idonea is a half-elf who was chosen to become part o...

Review: Enchanting Fate

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Enchanting Fate  by Ashley Evercott  is a twisted retelling of "Beauty and the Beast"  in which the girl destined to break the beast's spell falls in love with one of the other cursed residents of the castle. It is the first book in the Fairy Tales of Gallia series, which is likely to contain other twists on popular stories. Fractured fairy tales are a popular niche , and I'll admit this was a concept I hadn't seen before in a retelling. The characters' motivations are clear, and their struggles are understandable. However, the solution to their problem seems so obvious that some chapters are frustrating to get through. I just wanted to see everyone live out their happy ending with their true love and stop obsessing so much over a misunderstood solution to the curse. Marguerite is the daughter of a merchant whose business is about to go under. To restore her family's legacy, she must marry a wealthy nobleman who she doesn't particularly care for. Howev...

Ten Screen-Accurate Fairy Tale Adaptations that Weren't Made by Disney

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Disney was once famous for producing the most screen-accurate adaptations of well-known fairy tales, but their mission has strayed in recent years . Their current fairy tales are either soulless remakes of their animated classics  or stories that shy so far from the original source material that they can barely be considered adaptations. Nowadays, if you want to see classic stories from the past  brought to life on screen, you must turn to other studios. In a way, this post is the opposite of my "Ten Alternatives to Disney's Live-Action Remakes"  since that was a list of movies that were more creative and original with their ideas, and these are movies that stick as close to the source as possible. If you want to see the stories from your childhood brought to life on screen, this is the post for you. Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (1957) Disney produced a beautiful remake of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella  starring Brandy in 1997, but the first produc...