Stealing Snow by Danielle Paige

Published by Bloomsbury on September 20th 2016
Genres: Action & Adventure, Fantasy & Magic, General, Love & Romance, Young Adult
Pages: 304
Format: Paperback
Source: Publisher
Goodreads

From Danielle Paige, the New York Times bestselling author of Dorothy Must Die, comes a re-imagining of "The Snow Queen" fairy tale.Seventeen-year-old Snow has spent the majority of her life within the walls of the Whittaker Institute, a high security mental hospital in upstate New York. Deep down, she knows she's not crazy and doesn't belong there. When she meets a mysterious, handsome new orderly and dreams about a strange twisted tree she realizes she must escape and figure out who she really is.Using her trusting friend Bale as a distraction, Snow breaks free and races into the nearby woods. Suddenly, everything isn't what it seems, the line between reality and fantasy begins to blur, and she finds herself in icy Algid--her true home--with witches, thieves, and a strangely alluring boy named Kai, none of whom she's sure she can trust. As secret after secret is revealed, Snow discovers that she is on the run from a royal lineage she's destined to inherit, a father more powerful and ruthless than she could have imagined, and choices of the heart that could change the fate of everything . . . including Snow's return to the world she once knew.

I’ve been on a bit of a fairytale retelling kick at the moment and I’m loving how authors are using the classic stories as a base to write their own wonderfully twisted, interesting and exciting tales. I had high hopes for Stealing Snow. Loosely based on Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen (you may be more family with the Disney version, Frozen), Stealing Snow introduces us to Snow, a sheltered young woman who is removed from reality.

Snow’s not a typical seventeen year old. She’s spent most of her life trapped in a facility segregated from society. All Snow knows is a life full of prescription medication to control her moods, the high paced lives of those she watches on TV Soaps and the odd things she sees in her dreams. The boy she loves is being kept form her and her nightmares haunt her of a far and distant world different from anything she has ever known. When a strange man she has dreamt of offers her freedom from the institution and an opportunity to save someone dear to her, Snow jumps at the chance and finds herself in the world of Algrid. Full of magic, witches, handsome boys and evil kings, Snow needs to embrace her magical heritage and decide where her loyalties lie.

Stealing Snow is well written and shows readers a different take on a traditional story but I found it a hard book to finish. I was expecting it to be Snow White (and there are references to the Dwarf story) and it was a nice surprise to be more icy powers and broken mirrors than poison apples. I found myself frustrated with Snow’s tendency to fall in love with every boy she met but at the same time I loved how this reflected how her only real interaction with life was through watching soap operas. For Snow whose normal is seeing some socialite fall in love and wed half a dozen men after finding love at first sight, it felt right for her to fall in love at the drop of a hat with every boy she comes across. But I still found it frustrating.

I wanted to see more world building. More explanation into everything. More side effects for Snow’s lifetime in an institution. Some rationale for all the biting. And more Snow being the awesome potential heroine I know she could be. But I found her frustrating and her story to be both predictable and out of left field. It’s a weird mix which could work for some readers but left me simultaneously bored and confused.

Final Verdict: Potential to be awesome but fell short in many ways.