About the Book
-
Author:
- Kalynn Bayron
- Genres:
- Boy-Girl Romance
- Fantasy
Cover Story: An Apple a Day
BFF Charm: Yay
Talky Talk: Reimagining
Bonus Factosr: Fractured Fairy Tale, Found Family
Factor: Grief
Relationship Status: MFEO
Content Warning: Sleep Like Death contains discussions of grief and the death of loved ones.
Cover Story: An Apple a Day
The person on this cover looks trustworthy, but that apple looks far too pretty. I’ve read fairy tales. I know better than to ever take a perfect-looking apple from a stranger.
The Deal:
Eve Miller is the daughter of the queen of Queen’s Bridge, and a powerful magic user. She’s been training her whole life for a chance to defeat the bane of Queen’s Bridge, The Knight, a paranormal and evil creature who plagues the land, granting wishes with terrible consequences. Eve would never make such a wish herself, and she thinks her mother wouldn’t either, especially after her other mother was turned into a Nightengale many years ago thanks to a wish gone wrong. But as Eve nears her seventeenth birthday, she discovers something about her mother that changes her world forever—and she’s not sure if she’ll ever recover.
BFF Charm: Yay
Eve is a powerful person, even without her magical gifts, thanks, in part, to her training, but also due to her general nature. She’d make an amazing friend because of her loyalty, kind heart, and confidence, but I’d also worry about her and her quest for vengeance against the Knight; a quest that occupies nearly every waking moment and thought in her head. Regardless, I’d give her a BFF charm in a heartbeat. Not sure she’d take it, as I’d have little to offer as far as revenge goes, but I’d try!
Swoonworthy Scale: 5
Although Eve meets someone who eventually turns into a love interest, there isn’t much time for them to spend getting to know each other, and so the swoon feels a bit forced. But I appreciate the way Bayron included it, since it’s a big part of the original tale. (More on that below.)
Talky Talk: Reimagining
I’ve enjoyed every book of Bayron’s I’ve read, and Sleep Like Death is no exception. I haven’t yet read Cinderella is Dead, her debut and the first book in what she refers to as the “Cinderella is Dead Literary Universe,” but I was glad to dive into the universe with this book, which is a loose retelling/reimagining of the tale of Snow White. Her characters are passionate, real-feeling people—even the villains—and her world-building is superb. I look forward to more books from this universe, and will definitely be going back and reading her backlist.
Bonus Factor: Fractured Fairy Tale
Bayron took a lot of inspiration from Snow White for Sleep Like Death, but I didn’t really see it until nearly halfway through the book. Still, it was neat to see the way she played with the well-known story and even made sure to talk about how the “true” stories behind these tales are always different than they’re made out to be.
Bonus Factor: Found Family
When Eve is forced into hiding, she lives with a family made of a father and his four sons, some of whom work in nearby emerald mines. They take her in and quickly become like a second family to her. The father, Claude, is a huge bear of a man—so not at all a dwarf—but like I said above, Bayron seemed to have a lot of fun with changing the known elements of the Snow White story.
Factor: Grief
None of the main or secondary characters in this book go untouched by grief, and there’s a poignant passage in which Eve talks Claude and one of his sond about their shared experiences. It’s a passage that made me cry, but it’s also a beautiful scene.
“That is the nature of grief,” Claude says, dabbing at his eyes, though his voice remains steady. “It changes you. It burns you up from the inside and then you emerge from the ashes, like the phoenix.”
Relationship Status: MFEO
It’s a rare occurrence that a retelling doesn’t get me, Book, and you were not an exception. We had a great time, if a tough one, and I think we’re gonna be in this for the long haul. We’ve got plenty more adventures to have!
Literary Matchmaking
Jennifer Donnelly’s Poisoned is another Snow White retelling.
Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles is a series full of fairy tale characters in wholly different settings.
And her Gilded is another retelling with an evil twist.
FTC Full Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from Bloomsbury YA, but got neither a private dance party with Tom Hiddleston nor money in exchange for this review. Sleep Like Death is available now.
