Review: Entwined

Entwined
By Heather Dixon, read by Mandy Williams
Published 2011 by Random House Audio

Azalea is the oldest of twelve beautiful princesses who love to dance. But Azalea's life changes forever when her mother dies, leaving her feeling trapped, with only a mysterious magical realm her only chance of escape. At first, Azalea is enchanted by this underground world, and charmed by the mysterious Keeper. Soon, however, she begins to wonder if Keeper might have ulterior motives...

Ugh, this is another review that I really don't want to write. This book came on my radar when it was first published because I am a huge fan of fairy tale retellings (this being one of the "12 Dancing Princesses"), so when I saw the audiobook available for download, I snapped it up so I could get to reading it sooner. Unfortunately, this book did not work for me AT ALL. I'm not even sure I could give you a more complex plot summary than the one I managed to eke out up there because I was so dreadfully bored while listening to this. This is another one of those titles that I contemplated giving up on (which seems to be happening more frequently lately), but I stuck with it because I was desperately hoping it might get better. And there were a few moments where the humor injected into the otherwise dreary and plodding story made me giggle, always a pleasant surprise. But overall, this book reminded me of Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing, another young adult fantasy take on the "Dancing Princesses" tale, and that is not really a good thing. I found both books overly complicated and poorly paced, though Entwined does gain a bit of steam at the end. But the most I can say about either book is that it was boring - and that's never something you want to feel while reading. I understand that many people disagree with me about the Marillier book and I imagine the same is true for this one as well. This was a huge disappointment for me.