>>>>> Nº 33 on My 2015 Reading Challenge – A book from that reminds you of your childhood <<<<<
What if Aladdin had never found the lamp? This first book in the A Twisted Tale line will explore a dark and daring version of Disney’s Aladdin. When Jafar steals the Genie’s lamp, he uses his first two wishes to become sultan and the most powerful sorcerer in the world. Agrabah lives in fear, waiting for his third and final wish.To stop the power-mad ruler, Aladdin and the deposed princess Jasmine must unite the people of Agrabah in rebellion. But soon their fight for freedom threatens to tear the kingdom apart in a costly civil war. What happens next? A Street Rat becomes a leader. A princess becomes a revolutionary. And readers will never look at the story of Aladdin in the same way again.
Pub Date: Sep 1, 2015 by Disney Press
I received an eArc from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
This book had me really excited! I found out about when I was looking into fairytales retellings for a Top Ten Tuesday post a couple of weeks ago, I immediately marked it as “to Read”. My excitement grew when I started to roam around Netgalley and it was there, I requested it, even though my hopes were not high (I had just joined), but to my surprised this was my firs approved request and within 2 days I had a book I actually really wanted. So, as soon as I was done with Heir of Fire, I dove into this… I have always loved Aladdin, so I was expecting to love this book… I didn’t!
What a disappointment and missed opportunity! The concept of this new Disney series is to put a twist on known Disney stories, which sound great, but the result was not good.
First off, the first 25% of the book is the Disney animated movie, verbatim!
I didn’t find Liz Braswell’s writing enjoyable. It was way too repetitive and at times over descriptive, while other times totally ignoring and forgetting to explain some situations. Also, I didn’t find the POVs clear, I like to know which side I’m reading, it helps to get into the characters and the story, but at times I had no idea… 😦
The characters that we all know and love were underdeveloped and for me the only one that truly shone was Aladdin. Jasmine had some development, but I found it lacking and, at times, truly atrocious. The Genie’s contribution is really small here, given that he’s with Jafar the whole time, he never bonds with Aladdin, and they actually only speak once… what a shame!
Some messages really rubbed me the wrong way, liked this one, which is basically saying that damn your convictions, agree with what your girlfriend wants, because you won’t find better?
Oh, and that ending! What the hell was that?! I mean, at least there was SOMETHING in the book that I did not see coming, but that was bad… poor carpet, poor Genie, poor Sultan… And let’s not even mention Iago…
In the end, the little I enjoyed was based on the story I already knew, and if anything, it made me want to dust off Aladdin and push play.
Rating: 1.5 Stars
My Tiny Obsessions 
So far you don’t seem very impressed with the eArc’s you’re getting 😦
Well, this is the first one I actually requested, the other two were graphic and were already available for download (and I really did enjoy one of them).
I have a couple more eARCs (requested) that I need to get through, but this one was very disappointing.
It’s always sad when a book doesn’t turn out to be as good as one hoped.
yeah, oh well, it will get better 😉 I first need to up my score on netgalley to get the real good ARCs, lol
I wish you all the best with that! I have no idea how all of that works, but then again, I also don’t have any sort of eReader.
I’ll admit that they are practical… my kindle was not that expansive, and kindle books are a lot cheaper. But I’ll mostly use it for ARCs and books that I’m not really sure about.
Series and everything that I think I’ll like, I’ll buy the paperback as usual
Makes sense to me. 🙂
I am also trying to do exactly the same. I was rejected a couple of times and I was so sad. So I am trying my best to reach my 80% badge.
it’s hard! And I made a huge mistake of download a lot of the free books that sounded good (and now I don’t know when I’ll be able to get to them). But I’ll settle with something above 40%…
I am not in a hurry because you can still leave feedback even if the book gets archived.
yeah 🙂 I guess that’s good, but it’s really weird that they ask for for such a high score right from the get go… =/
Yeah that’s a bit unfair~
we’ll get there though…
Sorry this didn’t work aout for you. Hopefully the next book will be better. Great review!
i hope so to 🙂
Great review! I’ve been reading several similar ones, so why I’ll probably give this a go at some point, I don’t think I’ll be in quite the rush as I was originally.
i was sad about it, because it had the potential to be great… but sometimes things that work has animated features, don’t necessarily work as books… i don’t know =/
Aw, my thoughts are almost exactly the same, you were completely right! I agree that the writing was repetitive, but as for children book, it seemed fine enough for me. It was definitely not one of the worst things in this book at least in my opinion.
Because the plot… Sometimes it just seemed like I was in a nightmare. And that is never a good thing. 😀
and the inconsistencies?! i felt that she sometimes lost the thread she was spinning when she skipped chapters
Yes, it was sometimes confusing and happened often that I actually stopped caring. That’s what I meant by saying it that it was written like a screenplay for a film, where the tension is built and the screen just jumps to a different story. Except for the fact that there’s no real tension here.
agreed! Do you know if she’ll write the other books on the series or if it’s by multiple authors
No, I don’t, I tried to search for information about that, but it seems that this one is in the center of attention right now and there’s not much information about the sequels. I was actually wondering, if there’s going to be sequels, if this book is not accepted with love and adoration.
I wondered the same thing… I would like them to continue, even though I did not like this one. Other stories, and other authors, might do it right
Yes, I was thinking the same, especially because it wouldn’t continue this story and be an independent new twist!
yeah 🙂 it would be nice to see that take in some other stories
I was really looking forward to this one! I love alladin! Sad to see you didn’t like it!
Unfortunately I didn’t… I was looking forward to it too
The synopsis sounded really intriguing but it’s sad that it didn’t lived up to your expectations.I’m a fan of Aladdin too but I don’t want disappoint myself with this book.
maybe it could work for you, but let me tell you that it is not promising… =(
May be or May be not but I’ll give it a try! 😀
Good 😉
Oh no! This is such a shame… I was really looking forward to this book! 😣 I may still check it out but that really is sad that this book wasn’t as impressive as you anticipated. And quoting the movie in the story? Isn’t that some kind of breach of copyright? Anyhow I don’t enjoy when retellinfs do that. xoxo
Technically Disney has the rights, and the book is from Disney as well… But yeah, give it a go, then tell me what’s your opinion of it
Oh gosh, so I requested this book from Netgalley weeks ago hoping it’d be awesome. But after reading some other reviews and this one I have a feeling I’m going to hate this. T.T It’s so bizarre that this book kind of rewrote the Disney animation… Anyway, thanks for sharing your honest opinion though.
but you’re reading it either way, right? I’d like to know what you make of it…
Yes, I probably will soon since it’s released in the beginning of next month!
🙂