Review: Dorothy Must Die - Danielle Paige

Genre: YA Fantasy

Published: 1st April 2014

Length: 452 pages

My rating: 6/10

Overview: Amy lives in Kansas, until one day she gets swept away by a tornado. Sound familiar? She turns up in Oz, only to find it is not like the movie. Dorothy is a power hungry dictator, stealing the magic that fuels Oz. Can Amy defeat Dorothy and save Oz?

So this is the first book I've read by Danielle Paige. I enjoyed the fresh take on Oz and the bitchy Dorothy very much; however I wasn't overly invested in the plot and the characters. Having read the descriptions for the three other books in the series, it doesn't sound like there is major development, and they have pretty poor reviews, so I don't think I will continue with this series unless any of you want me to. The main problem is that it just didn't make me care enough to read on.

Amy Gumm is the main protagonist, and probably the most likeable character (although not gonna lie I really liked Dorothy even though she was horrible. Guess it's my villain complex kicking in again *sweats*). She is badass and sarcastic but at times she kind of irritated me a little. So many people told her not to trust anyone but she has all these secret little chats with every fucking character. Don't trust them you idiot! Everybody whose read this book also seems to adore Nox but honestly??? He just did not do it for me. I'm sorry but there is nothing special about him. 'I'm angsty and I act like I hate you but I don't' mmm okay sure honey. Glamora and Jelia or whatever her name was were pretty cool but apart from that I didn't care about anyone. Not even the monkey twats that everybody also seems to love.

The writing style was fine and often a chapter left on a cliffhanger so I wanted to read more. This review is difficult to write because there is nothing wrong with the book per se, I loved the concept, but I just wanted to get it finished. It dragged on a bit and the characters were just not that special to me. The ending was a bit messy and I understand that it needs to be left open for the next book but it just flopped a little. Like 'okay guys, I failed the main objective, the literal title objective of the book, but I killed one side villain so hey its great now lets just flee without checking up on the people that tried to save me and helped train me'. Mmm, kind of a dick move Amy. It also annoyed me how much better Amy thought she was than Dorothy, and I don't think the author intentionally wrote it like that but it felt that way to me.

An evil, twisted Oz is certainly interesting to read about. If you don't mind cheesiness and a lot of YA fantasy tropes then this book is probably worth a quick try.

#review #daniellepaige