Review: Enchanted

Enchanted by Alethea Kontis
Harcourt Children's Books
Release date: May 8, 2012
Pages: 320
File size: 338 KB
Format: Hardcover
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It isn't easy being the rather overlooked and unhappy youngest sibling to sisters named for the other six days of the week. Sunday’s only comfort is writing stories, although what she writes has a terrible tendency to come true.

When Sunday meets an enchanted frog who asks about her stories, the two become friends. Soon that friendship deepens into something magical. One night Sunday kisses her frog goodbye and leaves, not realizing that her love has transformed him back into Rumbold, the crown prince of Arilland—and a man Sunday’s family despises.

The prince returns to his castle, intent on making Sunday fall in love with him as the man he is, not the frog he was. But Sunday is not so easy to woo. How can she feel such a strange, strong attraction for this prince she barely knows? And what twisted secrets lie hidden in his past - and hers?

I love fairy tale retellings, so when I finally got a copy of Enchanted from the library, I was really excited. I couldn't wait to finish the book I was reading so I could dive into Enchanted. Before I got the book from the library, one of the pages at the library branch where I work asked me if I had read it yet. We started talking about it, since she was reading it, and when I asked if it was good, she said, "It was until Chapter 10." That worried me a little, but I eagerly started reading anyway, and tried to forget about what she had said. Despite that, I was really anticipating Enchanted to go downhill once I hit chapter 10.

Here's the thing: there wasn't really anything to go downhill from. I wanted so much to love this book, and while I didn't hate it, it didn't have the wow factor I was hoping it would have. And it certainly didn't get worse after chapter ten; the writing remained consistent, the plot was consistently paced, and I wasn't really bored of the story.

What I was, however, was confused. I wasn't expecting Enchanted to be a fairy tale mashup, but that's exactly what it was. I can't even tell you all the fairy tales that are present in this book, but The Frog Prince, Jack and the Beanstalk, and The Princess and the Pea are some of them. And it was complete fairy tale overload. I didn't want to read about a bunch of fairy tales; I wanted to read a retelling of one fairy tale. In one way, it was kind of cool to see how fairy tales can all exist in one world, but they collided to much in this world. I'm disappointed in that, because I think Alethea Kontis is a lovely writer. Her character were well-developed, the story was, for the most part, interesting, and she definitely wove a world I could believe I was a part of with her words, but the focus didn't quite seem all there to me.