Kindle Edition, 1st edition, 155 pages
Published October 2nd, 2013 by David Meredith

On the eve of her only daughter, Princess Raven’s wedding, an aging Snow White finds it impossible to share in the joyous spirit of the occasion. The ceremony itself promises to be the most glamorous social event of the decade. Things could not be better, in fact, except for one thing:

The king is dead.

The queen has been in a moribund state of hopeless depression for over a year with no end in sight. It is only when, in a fit of bitter despair, she seeks solitude in the vastness of her own sprawling castle and climbs a long disused and forgotten tower stair that she comes face to face with herself in the very same magic mirror used by her stepmother of old.

It promises her respite in its shimmering depths, but can Snow White trust a device that was so precious to a woman who sought to cause her such irreparable harm? Can she confront the demons of her own difficult past to discover a better future for herself and her family? And finally, can she release her soul-crushing grief and suffocating loneliness to once again discover what “happily ever after” really means?

The only things I knew about the story before I started reading it, was that it was obviously a Snow White retelling and that it was an emotional read. I saw a couple of raving reviews on Goodreads as well and because I love fairytales, I started reading eagerly.

The first chapter describing an air dance between two hawks was an interesting opening but it just went on and on, to the point of me rolling my eyes and wishing someone would just shoot the damn birds. I sincerely hoped that the rest of the book wasn’t a reflection (heh) of this. Thankfully, it wasn’t. Entirely, that is.

When Queen Snow White was about to discover the mirror, the tension was rising quickly and I thought “Finally, here we go!”. Edge of my seat stuff, really.
Not all too many pages later (there are only 155 of them anyways), the story fell flat for me again. Here was the Snow White story as we already knew it, except with a lot more physical and mental abuse coming from the evil stepmother. I never really think it’s necessary to give a character that extra kick in the ribs just to prove the darkness inside of the antagonist; I can usually determine whether someone is evil by more subtle means as well. The case here was everything but subtle.

As the story progresses, we get to read more original chapters about the life of Snow White after she married her beloved prince Charming. I thought that was a nice touch to it. Until I came to the part of their wedding night…

When I was about 10-12 years old, I once saw a German Snow White soft porn movie while flipping through the TV channels. Scarred for life I tell ya. Nobody wants to see Sneezy blow anything other than his nose!
Thank GOD, the dwarves aren’t involved in any kind of sexual activity in this book, yet I still felt very uncomfortable reading about Snowy’s cream pies. Mind you, this is my opinion and I’m a big prude when it comes to graphic sex scenes in general. I’m sure there are a lot of you out there who don’t mind at all! This book just added a whole new layer to the ‘Someday My Prince Will Come‘- Disney song…

Now, for all of you who are starting to wonder if this is merely a smut retelling of Snow White, it really isn’t. It’s not so much about Snow White in the first place, actually. Her character and world are just used to demonstrate the power of grief.
When grief takes over and turns into a depression, things quickly spiral out of control. Having a magical mirror to make you become aware of this and show you that there’s still so much to live for is something a lot of people could use these days.

TL; DR: David Meredith is clearly a storyteller. I’d like to read something completely original coming from the depths of his brain one day. This one just wasn’t my cup of tea. I found the political scenes to be boring and somewhat redundant, the sex scenes too inappropriately long, and the writing style too pretentious sometimes. Because I did find the storytelling to be vivid and liked the German names being used, I’m giving it 2 brownies (meaning it was okay!). As I’ve said before, this is just my opinion, there are a lot more positive reviews (for example, this one from Donna) out there as well to check out and see if this is a book for you.

A big thank you to David Meredith for providing me with a copy of his book in exchange for an honest review!

Links to the book:

Amazon US
Amazon UK
Goodreads