EVER AFTER HIGH

This Raven book came out back in January and I only just sat down to finish it today. I decided to work on some of my series books that have been piling up and I grabbed three from EAH's recent offerings. 

I abandoned Raven's book because I wasn't liking the transformation spell aspects going on, but I made myself plow through it. 

Basically, Faybelle and the Evil Queen team up to bring out Raven's evil. Faybelle leaves her an anonymous thronecake that's carrying a curse that encourages your evil side. But the spell is meant for trolls, so Raven spends most of the book accidentally doing evil(ish) things and trollish things. 

The main part that bothered me was that everyone around her keeps sniffing, because apparently she smells like...I think it was broccoli and old coffee. But no one mentions it until Maddie and then Mr. Badwolf connects the smell with trolls. The thing that's annoying is that Raven is with CERISE for half the book. Cerise should have known something was off with Raven's scent. She's half-wolf. 

Once they figure out there's a curse, Raven uses her acting skills to get the spellbook from her mom and reverse the curse. It was an okay book, but definitely not one of EAH's stronger offerings. Points for mentioning Ramona, although she didn't make an actual appearance.

The second book in the series, and unfortunately probably the last, is Apple's. And it's really weird to say this, but I liked Apple's book more than Raven's. Apple gets caught up in some mouse mischief planned by Faybelle, Kitty and Lizzie and the girls are assigned to clean up the mess their mice made and the dance that was supposed to happen that night is now off. 

In true Apple form, she gets shit done, but also comes to realize that Kitty, Lizzie and even Faybelle actually like her. They end up getting to know each other better, sticking up for each other and actually having fun. This one was a much better read than Raven's and involved more characters, which is always good. Author Heather Alexander actually used Duchess and anything with Duchess is a plus for me.

The other current EAH series is Once Upon a Twist, which has characters going into tales that aren't their own. This mayhem was of course concocted by Faybelle, who apparently is the go to villain in every book now. 

I read the first one, where Cupid is now Cinderella, Maddie is the Fairy Godmother and I believe Hopper was Prince Charming, months ago, so I honestly don't remember it. My main critique was that they didn't use the stepsisters from the webisodes, but made up new ones. 

The second book has Cerise as Beauty and Dexter as the Beast. This one I just read today. It's a solid story, but it's very insular. I love so many EAH characters that I like to see them, so my main disappointment here was that this was solely about Cerise and Dexter. Others were only there briefly. 

I think the diary series is over, but Once Upon a Twist has at least one more book, which puts Rosabella in the Goldlocks role. Cedar is there, too, but I don't know what her role is. It comes out on July 18th.