Snow White is a story that everybody knows, even if you haven't seen the Disney version, you will mostly likely have read or seen one of the tellings of this tale at some point in your life. You may not however be as familiar with the Evil Queen's back story, and maybe that's not such a bad thing.
I bought this book in a local charity shop on my way one Friday evening to get a cocktail with my cousin. I spotted it on display in the window and the cover caught my attention, because at first glance I thought it was a picture of 50s pin up Jane Russell. Being a fan of old Hollywood stars also, I stopped and realized it was the Evil Queen, who I then realized looks quite a lot like a young Jane Russell! I went in and purchased the book for only €2.00 which was a proper bargain! Luckily, my cousin, who is also a big Snow White fan found another copy of the book to buy and we headed on our merry way.
The story is all about the origin story of the Evil Queen and about why and how she came to be so diabolical in the first place. It begins with her as a young woman working with her mirror maker father, before she met the King and became Queen. The story then goes on to tell us of her marriage, her relationship with a very young Snow White and how it all went from so sweet to so sour. The book itself is a quick and easy read, including prologue and epilogue it only consists of 250 pages. I'm actually not sure how to explain what I feel about this book in any other way other than to just say "Meh". It was okay, the story itself could have been so much more imaginative and wicked. It feels like a good opportunity was missed here to be completely honest. The beginning few chapters and the ending are probably the worst. In the middle section, the Queen is starting to become unwound and we're seeing signs of, really who we're waiting for, which is the fantastically devilish and frightening character we had in the movie. However, those moments are too few and far between and not heightened enough to be truly entertaining. One of my major complaints about this book is regarding the supporting characters of the triplet female cousins that are used as a plot hole for everything the Queen does/has from the first film. I thought they were described as something from a Tim Burton film and I did not appreciate that for this story, they just did not fit. The final few chapters are nothing new and add nothing to the original story and I personally found them quite dull to read and left me feeling a little bit sleepy and a tiny bit grumpy. The one positive thing I could say, as mentioned previously, is that it is a quick and easy read and if you're a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs fan, it could be something to look into, if even to see what one person's theory is on why the Queen is just so gosh darn vain and so wonderfully Evil.
The Book is actually part of a series by the same author about origins of Disney Characters which also includes Beauty and the Beast's Beast and The Little Mermaid's Ursula (which I actually wouldn't mind checking out, to see if it is more entertaining than this book) You can check them out here
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