Review: Stealing Snow by Danielle Paige

Stealing Snow #1

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children

Publication Date: September 20th, 2016

Rating: 2 Stars

Source: Gift from Emma from Miss Print!

Format: ARC

Pages: 384

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Summary (from Goodreads):

Seventeen-year-old Snow has spent the majority of her life within the walls of the Whittaker Institute, a high security mental hospital in upstate New York. Deep down, she knows she's not crazy and doesn't belong there. When she meets a mysterious, handsome new orderly and dreams about a strange twisted tree she realizes she must escape and figure out who she really is.

Using her trusting friend Bale as a distraction, Snow breaks free and races into the nearby woods. Suddenly, everything isn't what it seems, the line between reality and fantasy begins to blur, and she finds herself in icy Algid--her true home--with witches, thieves, and a strangely alluring boy named Kai, none of whom she's sure she can trust. As secret after secret is revealed, Snow discovers that she is on the run from a royal lineage she's destined to inherit, a father more powerful and ruthless than she could have imagined, and choices of the heart that could change the fate of everything...including Snow's return to the world she once knew.

This breathtaking first volume begins the story of how Snow becomes a villain, a queen, and ultimately a hero.

Stealing Snow should have been such a hit for me. I love fairytale retellings. I loved Frozen and enjoyed the original story of the Snow Queen. I love the lost princess trope. But this book was SUCH a disappointment.

Snow has been in the Whittacker asylum since she was six and tried to lead a friend of hers through a mirror. In her 11 years at the asylum, she falls for another of the patients, Bale. When their first kiss goes wrong, they're separated for a year until Bale is pulled through a mirror and Snow has to listen to the dream orderly who told her to find him beyond the Tree.

Snow enters a kingdom called Algid, stuck in an eternal winter at the hands of her evil father, King Lazar. While in Algid she meets the River Witch, who tries to help her hone her powers. She also makes friends with Gerde, the River Witch's apprentice, and her brother Kai. She also befriends a group of Robbers, one of whom was the dream orderly who helped her escape the asylum.

Okay, so first of all, the writing in this book is so vague. Things moved too fast. She's just all over the place and there is really no explanation as to how she got there. One such example: Snow is on her way to the castle. She just gets her first glimpse of it in the distance and it immediately talks about what she is seeing through the windows. Is she an eagle? No, she just somehow manages to get there without moving because she's suddenly turning away from the window and leaning against the castle wall.

I know a lot of people have a problem when reading a book and it uses words that aren't utterances to describe how someone is talking. At one point instead of saying something, she silverlininged it. What?

I don't really know what I thought about Snow. Or really any of the characters. They were all just kind of blah for me. If I had to choose a favorite character, I think I might choose Jagger, one of the Robbers.

This book has three love interests in it. I don't really have any idea how that is going to go. She travels to Algid to save one of them and meets the other two there. I feel like there is really only any kind of chemistry with one of them and even that is kind of questionable to me.

I don't understand how she came into her powers. Why are they suddenly just accessible to her? And she gets shoved off a mountaintop once and uses them to save herself and thinks she is just so in control that she should run off on her own and subject to world to her questionable control over them? But somehow that was about all the practice she ever needed to wield them with decent skill.

Despite numerous problems I had with this book, I think that my least favorite thing of all about it is that I want to know what happens next. That plot twist at the end took me by surprise and made me curious as to what happens next. I don't know if I'm curious enough to read the book, but I want to know.

While it may not sound like it, I did enjoy parts of this book. I liked the beginning before Snow left the asylum. The characters there were so much more interesting then anyone in Algid. I also liked the ending because that twist took me by surprise. But I kind of hated the middle.

If you like retellings, multiple love interests, interesting snow/ice powers, probably the most painful kind of betrayal there could be, or plot twists, you might like this. I don't really think I recommend this book. I was at least a little bit entertained the whole time I was reading it, but I didn't really enjoy it as much as I hoped. If you read it, I hope that you like it more than I did.

If you've read this book, what did you think of it?