Dorothy Must Die (Dorothy Must Die, #1)

by Danielle Paige

[leahrosereads]

Quickie Cap:

Dorothy Must Die was an entertaining read for me. Though it had some faults, the book’s a solid first novel in a series. It follows Amy Gumm in an Oz filled with psychopaths and the story kept me interested all the way up to the final page of the novel.

"Oz--where all your worst nightmares can come true.”


One thing’s for sure, Amy Gumm is definitely not in Kansas anymore. And unfortunately for her, she’s also not in our grandmother’s Oz. She has pretty much crash landed (courtesy a tornado, of course) in an Oz so twisted, that I think Tim Burton would orgasm if he saw it.

Amy’s trailer trash, with a druggie for a mother, and a non-existent father. She’s “Salvation Amy”, our damaged heroine, and although she’d wish for a bus out of Kansas, life has always sucked for Amy, so it’s just her luck that she’d be thrown into this wonderfully terrifying Oz.


While thrust into this new world, Amy is introduced to a multitude of characters, including the members of the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked who want to bring Dorothy’s regimen of Good down. How to do that? Name of the title says it all. The Order needs Amy to kill Dorothy.

They begin training her in all the ways that will help her succeed in her quest. Nox (a love interest for Amy) trains her in fighting, Gert (a grandmotherly wicked witch) trains Amy to use the magic that flows all around in Oz, and Glamora (Glinda’s twin) trains her to be a perfectly polished drone. The last one is pretty important, because without that training, Amy would have been captured as soon as she entered the Emerald City (again).

Once undercover, Amy has to get close to Dorothy. Not an easy feat, when you’re disguised as a maid who’s at the bottom of the totem pole. While trying to get close to Dorothy, Amy makes several poor decisions, and because she only has bad luck, nothing goes according to plan, and Amy watches one of the Order’s insiders pay for her pigheadedness. Seriously, Amy has a lot to learn. Her mistakes throughout the book made me want to yell at her, possibly even slap her a few times. She’s an idiot, a brave idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. I believe Amy will learn as the story progresses, because she has to, or the Order and everyone counting on her to kill Dorothy will be disappointed.


Once I realized that this was book 1 in a trilogy, I knew there’d be no Dorothy death, and although bummed about that, I understood. Amy has A LOT of growing to do.

There’s a lot of world building and that was to be expected, but I was never bored with learning all of the intricacies of Oz. There were some slow points, but the pages kept turning, and I stayed entertained. I wish there was more on the Wizard in this book, but I’m assuming I’ll learn more about him in future books.

Though I never enjoy insta-love, insta-romance in any novels, I didn’t think Amy and Nox’s awkward, forced love was a detriment to the novel. I was a little concerned that there would end up being a love triangle of sorts between Amy, Nox and the mysterious Pete…but the last couple of pages cleared that right up for me.

I’m looking forward to reading more of this story, and I think that Danielle Page did a decent job at retelling Oz as an extremely dysfunctional place to live. Page also did a great job at making a heroine that was relate-able and relatively well formed. I’m looking forward to seeing Amy grow as the story progresses, both in confidence of herself, as well as her trust (or more likely) her loss of trust in those that surround her.