Review: Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige

Dorothy Must Die

Author: Danielle Paige
Series: Dorothy Must Die #1
Publisher: HarperTeen
Genre: YA Retellings
Format: ARC
Release Date: April 1, 2014
Source: Received from Publisher
Rating: 2 Stars
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***I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This has in no way changed my opinion of the book. The review below is my open and honest opinion.***   

Synopsis from Goodreads:

I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't ask to be some kind of hero.
But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado—taking you with it—you have no choice but to go along, you know?

Sure, I've read the books. I've seen the movies. I know the song about the rainbow and the happy little blue birds. But I never expected Oz to look like this. To be a place where Good Witches can't be trusted, Wicked Witches may just be the good guys, and winged monkeys can be executed for acts of rebellion. There's still the yellow brick road, though—but even that's crumbling.

What happened?
Dorothy. They say she found a way to come back to Oz. They say she seized power and the power went to her head. And now no one is safe.

My name is Amy Gumm—and I'm the other girl from Kansas.
I've been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked.
I've been trained to fight.
And I have a mission:
Remove the Tin Woodman's heart.
Steal the Scarecrow's brain.
Take the Lion's courage.
Then and only then—Dorothy must die!

My Review:

*sigh* I wanted to like this book so badly. I tried really hard. I almost didn’t finish it and you all know how hard it is for me to quit books. Which is probably why I did end up finishing it. The thing is that this is one of those books that just did not work for me. I think that other people will love this. Me, not so much.

It didn’t work for me for a couple different reasons, but the main one was that I just wasn’t enchanted by the story. I wasn’t interested. I guess I expected a bigger twist on the original Wizard of Oz story, but it felt like the same story with some new characters and other characters just shuffled around. Dorothy was the new Wicked Witch of the West. Amy was the new Dorothy. There were some dark twists and the book itself was pretty gruesome at times, but I guess it just felt like it had already been done to me.

I also didn’t like the main character. Amy annoyed me from the start. She was boring and flat to me and her inner monologue felt forced. I didn’t like reading about her. That’s what it really came down to. I did find some of the other characters really interesting like Ozma, the true princess of Oz, and Nox, the mysterious boy who works for the Order. But they didn’t interest me enough to keep me engaged.

The pacing was another thing that didn’t work for me. I felt like this book could have been 100 pages shorter and still told the exact same story. But even with the 100 extra pages, I still kind of felt like I was in the dark about some stuff. The author took a lot of stuff from the actual Wizard of Oz book which I’ve never read. And there are a lot of creatures that are mentioned, but never described so I honestly wasn’t sure what they were and I didn’t feel like googling so yeah. But anyway, the action was super slow at times and I just wanted the story to move along.

But I do think that some people are going to like this. If you have read the novel version of The Wizard of Oz, you may enjoy this more than I did. If you love the world of Oz you will probably like this more than I did. I really just think that the world itself didn’t work for me. So definitely check out some other reviews before writing this one off. Happy reading all! 

Have you read this one yet? Did you like it? Link me to your review! I would love to see an alternate opinion on this one since I totally felt like there was something wrong with me while reading.