Although my mind had been made up, it was a thoughtful gift. But, my husband, knowing how much I love Disney, bought me the entire set for Christmas. So let me start off by saying, I’d made up my mind to skip the A Twisted Tale series because I knew Liz Braswell would pretty much be retelling a story I loved, but where something new goes terribly wrong. That’s why it’s so freaking important to me that, at the very least, writers and moviemakers (ahem, Beauty and the Beast) get the feel of these remakes right. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without watching Belle fall in love with the Beast, or Pocahontas and Mulan stick it to the man. Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and Lion King set the tone of my childhood. With good reason, too: they had a lot to live up to.

Would my favorite characters face new, exciting challenges? Would I get a closer look at the romantic relationships? Would stories cross, and distant characters meet each other somehow, like in Once Upon a Time?! Would all my childhood fantasies come to fruition in my favorite medium?!?! I hyperventilated with the anticipation!īut on the other hand, I was hesitant to try the new Disney offerings. So, when I noticed a sudden influx of Disney retellings in the YA section of my local bookstore, my interest was piqued, to say the least. I love retellings and these ones are interesting as they just change one of the details (albeit an important detail in each one) and go from there – it’s amazing how much one action or decision can change a whole sequence of events that follow it.Book Review: A Whole New World: A Twisted Tale, by Liz Braswell The second book in the series is, Once Upon a Dream, which is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty – the tagline for this one is, “what if Sleeping Beauty never woke up?” I own this one as well so plan to read it in the Spring. In parts it was a bit too simplistic for my tastes but there was a lot of action and overall it was a quick, fun read! The second half really picks up with Aladdin, Jasmine and friends teaming up to defeat Jafar and free Agrabah from his demonic rule (which includes an army of the dead). The consequences of that, as you can imagine, are not good. In this story however, Aladdin doesn’t awaken the genie, Jaraf does. The first part of the book is written exactly like the beginning of the movie, Aladdin – even some of the dialogue is exact. I would give this 3.5 stars as I definitely liked it but it didn’t really blow me away. This is the first book in the Disney Press Twisted Tales series. This weekend I finished up with a few books, one of them being A Whole New World by Liz Braswell.

A whole new world by liz braswell