The Sisters Grimm (Sisters Grimm, #1)

by Menna Van Praag

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog!

This book was promising from the very first page onward. We get magic, we get fairy tales, we get amazing female characters that are not stereotypical. What else could I want?
The worldbuilding is amazing and you immediately get the gist even though some of the ideas might be a little more complex. I would have loved to get a little more background and information on Wilhelm Grimm, though. Where is he from, why is he like this, and what is his actual goal? I have quite a lot of questions here that didn't get answered throughout the book and I'm a bit sad about it. I think, this would have given the novel even more depth, drawn me into the story and I would have cared more about the outcome.
What I'd like to praise is the diversity in the characters. They are all decidedly unique without falling prey to stereotypes. Menna van Praag really did a great job on that front.
I could have done with a lesser amount of love stories as I generally don't care much for that. Well, it wasn't as if all story lines hinged on that, so it was okay. It didn't bother me much with The Sisters Grimm, but just once I'd like to have a book without that.
Furthermore, I like how Menna van Praag arranged the book. The story is told in a countdown/almost diary form. For each day you get short snippets from each of the sisters' life, learning about them in turn. Every other chapter is a look back to their childhoods which makes for an interesting contrast.
The twist she puts on familiar fairy tales is certainly enchanting. You never get quite what you might expect and her take on the tales is often more to my liking than the originals were. Well done!
All that being said, I would have liked a bit more on the background of Goldie and Scarlet. Or maybe even all of them. I get that the book is almost 500 pages long and they probably didn't want to make it even longer, but I really think the story would have benefitted from that. While we get a lot of scenes in Everwhere the details on their childhoods outside of that place are still a bit fuzzy to me.