Carrot Juice Zombie Infection

Hi Everybody (Hi Dr. Nick), sorry a bit of Simpsons humor, couldn't help myself.  How is everybody on this fine snowy morning?  Everybody got a big cup of hot coffee?  Everybody got there big fluffy blankies? Everybody got their ax in case of a snowy zombie attack? Oh...I'm being told it wasn't actually a zombie attack this morning, just a bunch of idiots who can't drive in the snow...well zombies are way more fun so lets talk about those instead.  Undead by Kirsty McKay is a YA book about zombies read because it was handed to me by my Hubbin who said "this looks cool, you should read it and tell me what happens", so I did.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD.

Bobby has it rough, she is a British native who was moved to the US because of her mothers job and then back to the UK for the same reason, this gives her a weird American/British combo slang accent that apparently is the basis for her having no friends.  Her concerned mother has sent her on a school skiing trip in Scotland to try and help her make some friends. This backfires and Bobby spends most of the trip being teased or ignored.  They are finally on their way back and have stopped at some little cafe in the middle of nowhere for lunch.  Bobby decides she has had enough of the teasing and stays on the bus while the others go in and eat.  Smitty a rebel without a cause is also staying on the bus as his bad boy attitude has gotten him in trouble. Their teacher goes into the cafe to get Smitty some food.  Bobby meanwhile needs to pee...bad, which we all know is one of the worst feelings in the world, she does not want to face her fellow students so she attempts to use the bus bathroom, but is informed by the bus driver that it is not usable when the bus is turned off. Bobby notes a poor guy in a giant carrot suit passing out samples of some veggie carrot juice to all of the kids and teachers.  All of a sudden the bus is hit from behind and the driver goes out to see what happened.  Meanwhile one of Bobby and Smitty's classmates, the popular Alice comes screaming out of the cafe, yelling that they are all dead and generally being incoherent.  As they look around they see the teacher that went to get Smitty food come out all slathering, hungry, and gross.  The kids barricade themselves in the bus until Smitty realizes that the driver has yet to come back.  Alice stays in the bus while Bobby and Smitty go drag him in, noting what looks like a bite mark on his arm.  Chaos ensues and the trio along with the

unconscious bus driver end up at a near by gas station where Bobby finally gets a chance to pee.  They meet up with the pale and geeky Pete who has been hiding in the bathroom, and the unsavory Gareth who is the local gas attendant.  More chaos and more zombies and the gas station ends up in flames, incinerating a good portion of the undead.  Gareth runs away with the only laptop and the kids discover that their cellphones don't work.  They head back to the cafe where the bus driver turns and more chaos.  They hunker down and do their best to barricade themselves in the cafe.  Bobby passes out from hunger, which while embarrassing is the sign for them to go find food.  being that they are in a cafe it should be pretty easy, the only problem is they don't know what it is that turned all of their classmates, teachers, and cafe workers into zombies.  Eventually they puzzle out that it was the carrot juice samples and tuck into their sandwiches.  They hood up with Lily and her 3 year old brother Cam who lost their mother to the carrot juice zombie infection.  They find a castle and break in, hunkering down for the night.  The next day as they are exploring they find what looks like cells, with a headless body in one of them and a locked tower.  The current occupants of the castle come home turn out to be not very nice, they make prisoners of the kids and continue with their plans. Lily reveals that she found the tower key and they withhold the information from their captors who are desperate to find it.  More chaos (are you sensing a theme yet) and little Cam turns into a toddler zombie who promptly turns his sister.  The rest of the crew make it up to the tower and watch the very convenient destruction of their captors.  They go through all of the papers and realize that the company responsible for this zombie menace is the same one Bobby's mom works for.  We also find out that Bobby's dad has recently died of cancer and that she has never had a good relationship with her mom.  So very conveniently Bobby's phone starts working and her mom calls to tell her where to find the antidote and how to escape and bring it to her.  Bobby and company escape and trudge across the ice, being chased by zombies to a little island.  They make Bobby's mom tell them what the heck is going on.  Apparently the zombie disease has been popping up in isolated instances all over the world and Bobby's mother's company was hired to find a cure.   Unfortunately human greed jumped into the mix and the rest of the team sold the engineered disease to some baddies who want to use it as a weapon.  The company itself was actually using the cafe and the carrot juice as a controlled test and have plans to wipe out the whole area once the test has been completed.  They try to escape, but Smitty goes through the ice and is bitten by underwater ice dwelling zombies.   Luckily Bobby uses the cure (that could save all of humanity) on Smitty and hopefully that cures him.  They flag down a school bus that is also returning from a school trip and hitch a ride.  As she drifts off to sleep, Bobby see's a carton of the zombie carrot juice...and it is empty.  The book ends with her screaming that they all need to get off the bus.

Eh, the book was ok.  It kind of felt like on of those movies on Disney or Lifetime that you don't look for, but since their on and the remote control is on the other side of the couch you may as well finish it.  I think the book was going for a snarky/comic feel, on review compared it to Shaun of the Dead (such an awesome movie), but I don't think it quite made it there.  The characters were all stock characters, slightly exaggerated, I think the author was trying to use them as satire, or parody, but she did not go far enough.  The situations were uneven and were resolved either in a cliche way or by some randomly convenient event.  The story itself was very straight forward zombie apocalypse, which sometimes worked really well, and sometimes just felt boggy.   The ending made it very clear that there was a sequel coming, so of course very little resolution was presented.  On the plus side, the author did a good job addressing things I always

wonder about in these kinds of predicaments...like having to pee, you almost never see or read about our hero's using the bathroom, but seriously when you gotta go, you gotta go.  One of the main things I teach my recruits at the fire station is that if you have to use the bathroom, especially in the middle of the night, don't wait 'cause their is nothing worse then doing CPR with a full bladder.  Things like eating, peeing, clothes getting sweaty and gross, hair and make going to heck, all of these things that we would have to deal with in real life usually get glossed over, but are addressed in this book.  I also loved that the three year old cutie was the requisite person to turn. In these situations somebody in the main group ALWAYS ends up a zombie and I love that she made it the kid. I also love that the disease was handed out as juice samples by a giant carrot.  I understand what the author was going for in this book, I think she was trying to make teenage zombie book in the vein of a parody, but the execution was not effective.  It comes across as mushy, predictable and a wee bit annoying.  Also the blurb and back of the book description are not at all an accurate representation of whats in the book, nor is the front cover.  Overall I think I may have actually liked this better as a cheesy Syfy channel movie and I give it 4 out of 10 zombie infected carrot juices.
What is the best vector for a zombie infection?  How would you feel if you found out your mother was working for a zombie company?  How horrible would it be if they infected the coffee supply?!?

Falling Into Deja Vu

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver is a book I have been back and forth about reading for a while now. It falls into the teenage angst category and I usually can only take so much of that, but I had heard a lot of decent reviews on it by some reviewers I trust, and it had the added bonus of being a daily deal cheapo ebook, so on the list it went.  I wanted one last "summer" read before I got into my more broody fall books and in general books about teenage girls fall into my summer reading category so that is how reading it came about.  I am glad I did, it was definitely full of teen angst, and if you have seen the movie Groundhog Day you will have a basic idea of the hook, but I thought the over all book was a good look at how one see's themselves.  Ok here we go, quick convoluted synopsis, as always SPOILERS AHEAD! (Also big kid language and some not so child friendly situations)

Samantha is dead, yep no real mystery or suspense, our main character is dead (not a bad start to a teeny-bopper book right!).  The story is about how she died and what comes after.  After we learn Sam is dead she goes on to tell us how it happened.  I will break up this synopsis the way she does 'cause that will be the most effective.
Day 1-Sam gets ready for Cupid Day, a pre-Valentine ritual day at her highschool where students dressed as some form of Cupid hand out roses with notes attached to them to the students from other students.  It is kind of a popularity contest to see who gets the most roses.  She gets a ride from her loud, beautiful, brash friend Lindsay, who is the ring leader of this group of popular seniors.  Also in the group is Ally, a talented cook with body image issues and Elodie a sweet, fun loving girl.  They arrive at school and steal the last close parking spot, causing another girl to be late (details like this are important to the over all story).  They go to class and Sam cheats on a chem pop quiz, flirts with her math teacher and gets several roses from her friends, including one from her old friend Kent (whom she rarely speaks to anymore as he would put a dent in her popularity) and one from her hot and popular boyfriend.  She meets her friends for lunch and they

viciously tease a girl named Juliette, calling her Psycho and singing rude songs.  Sam's boyfriend Rob meets up with her and reminds her that they are going to have sex for the first time that night after a party at Kent's house.  The girls go to Ally's house and get ready for the party, hitting the vodka pretty hard before they even leave.  At the party Rob (already drunk) paws at Sam, again reminding her of there "special" night later.  Sam and her friends continue to drink until Juliette shows up at the party and calls each of the girls a bitch.  In retaliation the girls push Juliette around and dump their drinks all over her.  Eventually they are ready to go and Rob has had so much to drink he passes out.  Disgusted Sam decides to go home with her friends.  The all pile in the car and go driving into weather that has turned wet and slick.  Sam notices little things about each of her friends, and especially the state of Lindsay who is driving, which is to say she is not sober at all.  All of a sudden a white flash appears and the car goes off the road, slamming into a tree.  There is light, noise and pain and then the sensation of falling.
Day 2- Sam wakes up...to Cupid day.  She is understandably confused and tries to figure out what happened.  She finally decides it is a cross of deja vu and a weird dream and continues with her day.  Since she made them late, they do not get there parking spot and have to park further away from the school making them late.  As the day goes on Sam realizes that she remembers everything that has happened,

except for a few minor changes.  The day pretty much progresses as before ending in the car crash.
Day 3- Sam wakes up again on Cupid day, realizing that she has to find a way to make things happen differently she convinces her friends to stay in that night and have a slumber party instead.  We get to know a bit more about there friendship, and it is actually pretty sweet to see four teenage girls this tight.  Later, after everybody is asleep and Sam if feeling pleased that she has not died in a car crash the phone rings.  It is somebody calling to tell them that Juliette (the girl they have been mercilessly teasing) has shot her self in the head.  Everybody reacts to the news differently.  Ally and Elodie feel guilty about all the teasing, but Lindsay brushes it off, stating it is not there fault, that Juliette made her own choice.  Later Sam goes through old year books and finds out that Juliette and Lindsay used to be best friend.  She goes to sleep and wakes up...
Day 4-Cupid day again, apparently not dying the night before did not change anything and she has to go through the day again.  Angry, tired, sad and frustrated she takes the day to do all kinds of crazy stuff.  Making out with her hot math teacher, cutting classes, pissing off her friends on purpose, feeling trapped by this never ending time loop. She ends up hanging out with people she normally does not hang out with, and learns a lot about how her and her friends actions are effecting others. She also finds herself caring what other people think, even knowing nobody will remember any of this when the day repeats itself. The day ends with Kent putting her to bed at his house and her realizing that she likes him way more then Rob (who is kind of a jerk).  She goes to sleep and wakes up to...
Day 5-This is the day she decides to do something different every day, since she is stuck in the endless cycle anyways.  She makes a list of everything it is possible to do in a day.  This day she decides to stay at home with her little sister Izzy.  We learn a lot of Sams history in this chapter, that she used to be unpopular until Lindsay decided to be friends with her.  She tries to impart as much as she can to Izzy and spends the evening with her parents.  She also runs into Juliette's younger sister and decides to try again to stop Juliette from killing herself.  She ends up at the party, talking with Juliette in the woods by the side of the road.  As hard as she tries she cannot stop Juliette from throwing herself in front of a car zooming down the road.  Turns out the car is Lindsay's and it causes the accident that was supposed to kill Sam, but kills Elodie instead as she was the one in the front seat.  Sam stays at Kent's house as he consoles her as best he can and she finally falls asleep.
Day 6-Sam wakes up and decides to try and fix everything, thinking maybe if she can save Juliette she can save herself and life will finally continue.  She sends Juliette a dozen roses for Cupids day, is nice to Kent, dumps Rob, scrubs off the mean sayings they wrote in the bathroom, just tries to fix everything in general.  She goes to the party and tries to talk to Juliette.  Again she ends up at the edge of the road, trying to convince Juliette that things are going to be better, but it is still in vain.  This time Juliette jumps in front of a semi truck.  Sam drives her friends home (at this point she has learned to stay sober) and takes Lindsey home last, finally learning about how she put the blame on a bed wetting at camp back in the fifth grade on Juliette, nicknaming her Mellow Yellow even though it was Lindsay who wet the bed.  This was the point where Lindsay became popular and Juliette became shunned.  Kent takes Sam home and they kiss.
Day 7-Sam finally realizes what she needs to do to move on.  She treats the day like any other, only making small adjustments from before.  Putting a single nice note on Juliette's rose, dumping Rob, not cheating on her chem test.  Little things, but important.  The biggest thing she does is arrange for other rides for the girls at the party, telling Lindsay that driving drunk will only get people killed.  The girls finally agree and get dropped off at the party.  Kent comes and picks up Sam to take her to the party and she apologizes for being a jerk and kisses him.  She catches up with Juliette, again trying to convince her to not kill her self, again she fails. This time though when Juliette jumps, Sam jumps after her and pushes her out of the way, getting killed herself.  In the epilogue Sam tells us that once you accept your death it isn't bad.

That synopsis does not really sum up what I liked about this book.  There was a great arc to Sam's understanding of her actions and her friends actions, and even the consequences of their inaction's leading up to the point of her death.  It is a pretty brutal look at the current state of teenagers (and humans in general) today.  There is a lot of drinking, smoking, sex, and all around destructive behavior, but unfortunately from some of the calls I have run, this is not an abnormal thing.  This book examines not just the teenagers, but other factors that influence there actions.  Parents and their lack of control or knowledge about there own kids, teachers who have there own questionable motives on occasion, peers, jobs, money, status all of these things go into how a person acts and reacts.  I think one of my favorite parts about this book was how at the start Sam really did not understand how her words and actions affected other people.  The hierarchy of popularity was one she accepted, calling it preparation for the real world of haves and have-nots. Even when she realized that there may be consequences, she still believed that it was not her problem and it was the others that should deal with it.  She comes to realize that popularity is pretty arbitrary and has very little to do with reality and more to do with luck and the willingness to let it be the status quo. She also realizes her earlier assumptions about people, including her own friends was usually completely wrong.  This leads to her trying to "fix" things through out her repeating day, but even this does not always work as she is still working on her own assumptions.  I have to say I love that even after understanding her friends flaws, and knowing that there way of doing things is wrong, at the end the four girls are truly friends, not letting anything, not boys, money, or issues come between them.  It is nice to see (as convoluted as it sometimes is) a story where friendship between females, a fierce loyalty we usually only see in military bro stories take center stage.  This book reminded me about everything I hated in high school (and I actually had it pretty good) and made me very glad that I am no longer dealing with that shit for lack of a better term.  This book was not perfect, it had its cringe-worthy moments and the angst was definitely present, but over all I would recommend this book.  I would especially recommend it to anybody who has to deal with teens, has a teen or pre-teen, or just wants something to think about.  I give it 7 out of 10 Cupid Roses.
How do you feel about books set in high school?  What "group label" did you get stuck with?  Did you ever sneak a book into your textbook like I did?

Slogging Through The Scorch

Sometimes I just have to force myself to finish a book and that's all there is to it.  I had expected to get through The Scorch Trials (the second book in the Maze Runner Trilogy) fairly quickly, considering I read the first one in about a day.  I had mixed feelings about the first book, but wanted to finish up the trilogy, if nothing else to see what the heck it was all for.  I really tried to go into the second book with an open mind, but ugh, I had a really hard time with it.  To me it had all the problems of the first book with very little of it's good points.  Anyways here is a quick and probably jaded synopsis (I apologize to those of you who love these books, it is just my own personal take see this post for a fuller explanation).  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!

This book starts off where the last one left off.  The boys awaken in there nice cozy beds ready for some well deserved R&R.  Of course this does not make for a good story so instead they are set upon by crazy, sick, oozy people called Cranks.  Apparently the disease called Flare takes up residence in your brain and eventually makes you cuckoo.  Luckily for our boys they are safe behind barred windows.  Shaken up, but determined to figure out what the heck is going on they go to find there rescuers from before.  As they wander into the kitchen, trying to find some answers, they come upon the horrifying sight of all there rescuers dead and hung from the ceiling...WTF!  They all gather and talk and discover that instead of Teresa in her
room it is a boy named Aris who informs the Gladers that he was the "Teresa" in another Maze situation that was completely identical except that it was full of girls instead of boys. The only other differences are that more girls made it out then boys (well duh! :-) ) and that his partner Rachel got killed in front of them, since they didn't have a Chuck to jump in front of her.  A man appears behind a force field and informs the Gladers that they have all been infected by the Flare and that they had exactly two weeks to make it 100 miles across the Scorch (an area that has been devastated by a mega sun flare ((this has a serious SyFy channel feel to it)) and is pretty brutal on its own) and make it to a safe haven where they will all be cured. So off they set and as you can probably guess all kinds of horrific, non-sensicle things happen to them (seriously a head eating ball is just one of the horrors they  deal with). Teresa also shows up randomly to add additional torture to poor Thomas (who is still our main character).  After many deaths and injuries they make it to this city type place that is over run by Cranks in various states of the disease.  They make a tentative alliance with a pair named Jorge and Brenda who have just been diagnosed and exiled.   The group gets separated, Jorge and the Gladers wander around and Brenda and Thomas get into a couple of scrapes.  Cranks are crazy and do crazy things.  Eventually they all meet up again to continue across the Scorch.  Teresa shows up again with Group B (the girls) and captures Thomas.  They are supposed to kill him, but he talks the girls out of it.  Teresa and Aris get together and kidnap Thomas and take him to this box thingy that is supposed to kill him.  It releases some gas that heals him and Teresa and Aris said it was all part of the plan that he felt betrayed...yeah.  Thomas is understandably unable to forgive Teresa, or even believe anything that anybody is saying at this point.  They all meet back up with the other groups at the supposed safe haven site.  About 30 minutes before the deadline, weird monstery humany things appear and start trying to kill the kids.  Most of them hang on long enough to get to the deadline.  A ship appears in the sky and collects the kids.  They tell them that they are safe now (we've heard that before) and that everything will be explained.  Thomas falls asleep to Teresa talking in his head, telling him that WICKED (the group behind all this crap) is good.  The book ends with a memo talking about removing the mind wipe and telling the kids which of them are immune to the Flare.
Whew done with that!  I have not been so happy to finish a book in a while...and I still have two more to go!  This book had all of my most hated pet peeves in a second book.  It felt fairly pointless and unnecessary.  The whole point of the book seemed to be to torture teenage kids...and that is about it.  We do not get a whole lot of information about the world, or WICKED that we did not get in the first book.  In fact the only thing that was really new was the fact we find out that it was Thomas, Teresa, and Aries choice to go into the
Maze.  We keep seeing the WICKED people talk about patterns, and creating patterns, and that all this pointless stuff will result in patterns...but not a single mention of what the heck it is.  I will give the author props for inventiveness when it comes to the myriad of tortures he puts his characters through.  Walks down pitch dark tunnels resulting in peoples heads being eaten by balls of metal, random boxes of fear, giant monsters men who can be taken down by popping orange bubbles.  All very terrifying.  The character development was not as complete as the last book, while the friendships between Newt, Minho, and Thomas stayed refreshingly intact and very bromance, the new characters were just kind of tossed in there to further the "plot" which is pretty sparse to begin with.  Overall not one of my favorite books, it was very frustrating to watch these kids get jerked around, tortured, hurt, killed, lied to and then tell them "it's for a reason, but we won't tell you the reason".  As a reader, I personally can only take so watching characters get relentlessly punished with out any payoff, it starts to feel icky and squirmy, like I only am reading it so I can watch them suffer.  Like I said earlier, I will finish off the series to see if there is any pay off, but I think the open mind part is starting to suffer.  Those of you who enjoyed these books, please let me know in the comments why, because I really want to know!

How does this book compare to other second books in YA dystopia series?    Have you ever made your self finish a series?  How does one come up with head eating metal sphere of doom?

Water Song

Hello all, picked up an extra shift at the station last night so if this rambling is a bit more rambely then usual, that may be why...or I'm just in an extra rambley mood (spell check hates me right now).  Today's rambely ramble is on Water Song by Suzanne Weyn and is a retelling of The Frog Prince.  This book is part of the "Once Upon A Time" series (not the TV show) that has various authors "re-tell" classic fairy tales in a short book form.  This has kind of been a hit or miss series for me, some of the books are amazing, some are ok and some flat out don't make any sense.  For me this was one of the ok ones, as always SPOILERS AHEAD.

Emma is a wealthy British girl who has found herself trapped at her families estate in Belgium as World War I, or The Great War as it was called then rages on around her.  Her mother has died in a bombing, leaving Emma and two Flemish speaking servants stuck until her father can get to her. While trapped, Emma receives a letter from her beau back in England essentially breaking up with her. In a fit of rage Emma throws her gold locket with his picture in it down the well. Meanwhile a young American Jack Verde who has joined the British Army has been caught in a chlorine gas attack and has stumbled into the well on Emma's property as a way to rinse of the burning gas.  Emma regrets her impulsive decision to throw her locket away as it is not only a family heirloom, but it contains the pictures of her parents.  She decides to go down the well to look for her locket and discovers Jack, barely able to cling to the ladder in the well.  While they are down there German soldiers come and pull them out, using some quick thinking, Emma tells the soldiers that Jack is her American husband and that they both live at the manor (this is before the Americans joined the war).
 The Germans take over the manor, using it as a base of operations and lock Jack and Emma in her parents bedroom.  Emma and Claudine help nurse Jack back to health, along with the help of Jack's spirit dreams in which he sees his deceased mother who had a gift for healing and spells.  When Jack wakes up he and Emma engage in a constant stupid poor boy vs spoiled rich girl spat (which quickly gets annoying). As Jack reveals his history, a life in the Louisiana bayou, mother dying young, time in a home for boys, and his decision to join the British army, he tells Emma that he can hold his breath for a very long time. A couple pages later Jack is demanding a kiss and the promise of true friendship in return for getting her locket out of the well. Insulted that he would ask her for a kiss she decides to go find the locket herself.  Her foot gets stuck in a crevice while she is under water and she is saved by a mysterious giant frog man. Jack reveals that he is in possession of the locket and gives it to her, he then reminds her of the pact, telling her she has to be his true friend and that she owes him a kiss, which she refuses to give.   Meanwhile the German soldiers tell Emma that if she wants to keep herself and Jack alive, she will need to spy on the villagers when she goes into town for food.  Emma feeds information that she knows is common knowledge to the soldiers, keeping her from turning traitor.  She makes an attempt to escape, but her promise makes her come back to try and help Jack.  At this point some Allied soldiers are captured, including Kid, a young soldier who fought with Jack.  Kid is wounded by a bullet and Jack goes back into his spirit dreaming to learn how to heal him.  Jack is successful.  At this point Jack and

Emma have fallen hopelessly in love with each other, but neither is willing to admit it.  Kid is taken away for questioning by the Germans and Jack finds a way to keep him alive even after he is shot again.  Later Emma helps him escape to a sympathetic farmhouse and he tells her about the giant frog man that saved him. Emma and Jack use a secret passage they find to eavesdrop on the Germans and decide to escape.  Jack thinks it is to dangerous for Emma and puts her to sleep with a potion.  She wakes up and goes after him, only to fall into a swamp.  Jack dives down and rescues her she kisses him and tells him she loves him, and then they are promptly chased by the Germans.  They run and Emma is shot in the arm and her head is grazed.  Jack makes a raft and they are rescued by the Allied force.  Emma joins the U.S. Army Signal Corps and finally joins Jack when the war is over.

I liked the idea of this book much more then I liked the book itself.  The historic context was pretty cool, and I have been into the WWI era, especially in Europe lately so this was right up my ally.  The writing itself however was pretty simplistic and rote.  I am not sure if it is because the book was so short, or this is just how the author writes, but the characters were severely underdeveloped.  Jack was probably the most talked about character, but his story had a weird mix of too much going on with not enough explanation.  Was he the son of a voodoo queen, an orphan, a champion swimmer, a man of mixed heritage, all this random super special stuff that just got shoved into random places.  Emma never got beyond the rich girl with rebellion issues, her "spirit and fire" came off as petulant and defensive until she fell hopelessly in love with a guy she knew nothing about after three days.  The rest of the characters in the book each had one tidbit that was supposed to set them apart, but no follow through.  There were some cool bits about what was going on during that time period, and it was nice not to have the Americans be the hero's for once.  Mostly I wanted less googly eyed reasons that they were so in love with the perfectness of each other for half the book and more of the story, which if had been more developed I think could have been awesome. The story also was a weird mix of repetitive (get caught, make up a story, fight/bicker, fall in love, sneak out, lather, rinse, repeat) seriously the sequence happened at least three times before the end of the book. The author did get pretty much all of the major plot points of the original story in (the golden ball down the well, the petulant princess, the frog "prince", sharing the bed with the frog), but even some of those felt like a stretch on occasion.  Overall I think more story and less lovey dovey would have made this a better book.  I give it 5 out of 10 golden balls.

What is your favorite retelling?  Do you like it when they use a historical setting to re-tell a fairy tale or do you prefer a magical one?  Do I expect way to much out of short young adult novels?