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My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A Mirror Mended is a fantasy novella with folklore elements and the sophomore entry in the Fractured Fables series by Alix E. Harrow. You can find my review of the first book in this series here.
The ebook version is 144 pages. I listened to the audiobook, which clocks in at a little under four hours and is narrated by Amy Landon. We follow our main character with a first-person point-of-view.
Zinnia Gray is a lapsed Sleeping Beauty who continues to run away from her own life by rescuing other snoozing princes and princesses by pricking her finger with a splinter. Her friends back home are not amused. After a one-night stand with someone from the royal family of the princess she just rescued, she looks into a mirror and sees a face that’s not her own staring back at her. A face that’s gorgeous but has a tinge of evil. A face that’s asking for her help. She’s dragged through said mirror as Snow White’s Evil Queen learned about the ending of her story, and doesn’t like being trapped in a story she didn’t choose.
The writing here is not horrible and the narrator does a great job; however, I found the book to be quite middling overall. I did not like it as much as the first novella in the series, which I felt was an great starting point for feminist folklore retellings.
One of the things I didn’t like in this sophomore entry was that Zinnia mentions going on tons of adventures helping other Sleeping Beauties, and I kind of wish we got to see more of that. I also much preferred the character arc Zinnia had in the first novella to this one. Here, she feels like she’s regressed a bit?
It’s definitely worth a read/listen if you liked the first one, or if you dig feminist folklore retellings and the exploration of agency.
Tropes in this book include: folklore, retelling, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, bisexual main character, older female love interest
CW: chronic disease, genetic disorder, terminal illness, torture, confinement, domestic abuse (mentioned)
Special thanks to Tordotcom, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for providing an audio galley of this book for me to review. All opinions contained herein are my own.
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