Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Pricked by Scott Mooney on August 13, 2019
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 328
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley
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Briar Pryce has the power to change the emotions of others by handing them a rose. It is a talent that has done surprisingly little for her, besides landing her a dead-end enchantment delivery job and killing any chance she had with her childhood-crush-turned-roommate. Worst of all, her ability might be responsible for getting her best friend transformed into a cat via a cursed muffin basket. Needless to say, Briar is nowhere near happily-ever-after. But that’s just life as a twenty-something in the Poisoned Apple, New York City’s lost borough of fairy-tale wonder and rent-controlled magic.
When Briar reluctantly agrees to help find a princess’s kidnapped boyfriend in exchange for reversing the curse on her friend, she gets the heroic quest she never really wanted. Unfortunately, the life of a noble heroine is not all it’s cracked up to be – the hours blow, and Briar suspect that the Royal family employing her might be evil, Republican, or both. To complete the suckage, a killer smoke magician is stalking Briar as she searches both the Poisoned Apple and Manhattan for the missing boy. As tensions between the Poisoned Apple royalty ignite and civil war looms, Briar must figure out how to write her own happy ending--or she’ll just be ending.
Molly Whuppie, one of the few worthwhile classic fairy tale heroines, and a personal role model of mine. The sculpture showed her holding up the ring she stole from a giant, after tricking him into beating his wife and killing his children . So she wasn’t the nicest fairy tale figure. At least she had spunk. Better than those boring , lay-on-my-back-until-I-get-rescued Sleeping Beauty types.
“So you’ve been snatched by monsters, held for three days, and you’re now on a heroic quest to rescue your true love? Do I understand that correctly?” Horace said to Rick.“Uh…” Rick looked to me, and I gave him a swift nod. “I guess. Yeah.”“Well. With that track record, you’ll be a full Apple citizen by the end of the week.”
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I really love the idea of the set up of this book, that is definitely rare to see in books. Sounds like a solid story for a debut. Hope her writing becomes more polished over time.
The idea for the story was a lot of fun and I liked the glimpses of the world we see.
This sounds like a lot of fun. I like the way the book is set up. Thanks for putting this one on my radar, Robin.
The set up went well and I could see this being a fun paranormal mystery series down the road.
I try to allow for world building and setting up the plot and characters when starting a series. Especially in this genre. Sounds like an intriguing spin and I really like the title and cover.
Same, for something like this if I like the premise of the world I generally give it until book 2 or 3 to make a serious judgement on the series.