Bild på författaren.

Menna van Praag

Författare till The House at the End of Hope Street

13 verk 1,221 medlemmar 115 recensioner

Om författaren

Inkluderar namnet: Menna Van Praag

Foto taget av: Menna van Praag

Serier

Verk av Menna van Praag

Taggad

Allmänna fakta

Kön
female
Nationalitet
UK

Medlemmar

Recensioner

This is a fantasy book about four half-sisters, Goldie, Liyana, Scarlet, and Bea. "Goldie (earth) manipulates plants and gives life. Liyana (water) controls rivers and rain. Scarlet (fire) has electricity at her fingertips. Bea (air) can fly."
I won a copy from LibraryThing and was hoping for a good read. I like a good fantasy read. Not so. It (in my opionion) is not a teen read. I have tried twice to read this book and cannot get past the language.
I will give it a 1 star.
 
Flaggad
mnleona | 23 andra recensioner | Feb 26, 2024 |
Really enjoyed this book of feminism and magic.
 
Flaggad
secondhandrose | 48 andra recensioner | Oct 31, 2023 |
Etta owns a dress shop. Each time a woman puts on a dress from Etta's shop it instills confidence in the woman to follow her dreams. Etta has raised her granddaughter, Cora since she was small. Etta would like nothing better than for Cora to find love. Cora is married to her job and seems oblivious to love.
Walt owns a bookstore and he and Cora have been friends since they were young. Walt has been in love with Cora for a long time.
Things get complicated when Walt, starts to read books on the radio and women all over England fall in love with his voice and write to him, some for advice and some in the hopes of falling in love with Walt.… (mer)
 
Flaggad
dara85 | 20 andra recensioner | Jul 26, 2023 |
This book should come with major trigger warnings for trauma/content. It contains: child abuse, sexual abuse, self-harm, depression, suicidal thoughts, incest, injury, dementia, loss, fat-shaming, slut-shaming, racism – yes that’s a lot and I’ve probably missed some.

I was sent a free copy of the book via Netgalley in return for a review.

Please head over to my blog to read my full review: https://geeking-by.net/the-sisters-grimm-review/

As a lover of dark fairy tales, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the word Grimm was not the first thing that grabbed my attention. I’m also a fan of the TV show Grimm so I was curious to see another work of fiction that seemed to be using the term as an identifier. Did these Sisters Grimm have anything in common with the Grimms from the show? Were they monster hunters too? Or was there something else happening here? I had no idea but I wanted to find out!

My feelings towards this book were quite ambiguous throughout; I didn’t dislike it, but I didn’t love it either. I continued reading eagerly to know what was going to happen, to follow the trail and find out how the mystery ended. However, at about 60% I began to realise that it was going to take a monumental showdown, and a massive twist at the conclusion to redeem the book in my eyes – and The Sisters Grimm failed to do that.

There were a few clever twists at the end that I didn’t see coming but overall it ended as I expected and that is not a good sign for me. I like to be surprised, I like to be shocked and have my heart torn from my chest, thrown to the ground and stomped all over. I don’t like reading a book that makes me roll my eyes and sigh at yet more trauma, more drama being thrown at the poor characters once again.

As the book went on I found it increasingly difficult to connect with it. The characters themselves were flimsy, based on and named after fairy tales in a way that reminded me of my time as a role player. They all have a Mary-Sue quality to them; the naive blue-eyed golden-haired girl, the fiery redhead, the token immigrant and the promiscuous Latino. The inconsistencies did not just stop with the weak characters either; it dips and dives between first/second person and past and presence tense, and the timelines are all over the place, darting from the present to the past without warning with multiple authors (7 at my counting).

The Sisters Grimm is the author’s first foray into fantasy, however, I would argue heavily against classing this as a fantasy novel. For me, it is magical realism rather than fantasy or urban fantasy. It's also being put forward as a fantasy novel by the publishers and it’s is the first book in a trilogy which is honestly baffling to me. While I have many issues with the book the ending wasn’t one of them; there were no loose ends, everything was wrapped up and it reads like a perfect stand-alone novel.

Trauma was the biggest theme of this book, which is why I’ve ended up devoting an entire sub-section of the review to the topic. It was quite troublesome to find so much trauma in this book because a) it’s supposed to be a fantasy novel and b) you’re someone with PTSD and mental health conditions. While I’m no stranger to fantasy novels including forms of trauma – after all you’d need to be living under a rock not to at least be familiar with the violence and trauma present in Game of Thrones series – I don’t expect it to be at the forefront of the novel. Fantasy to me is about the theme of fantasy, the world-building, the magic, and anything else is character development. Take all that away and you’ve just got contemporary fiction, possibly chick lit. Either way; not fantasy and certainly not something I would have read if it hadn’t come attached with the fantasy label.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
justgeekingby | 23 andra recensioner | Jun 6, 2023 |

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Associerade författare

Adjoa Andoh Narrator
Imogen Church Narrator

Statistik

Verk
13
Medlemmar
1,221
Popularitet
#21,037
Betyg
½ 3.5
Recensioner
115
ISBN
89
Språk
3

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