Disney's Twisted Tales: Part of Your World

Continuing on with Twisted Disney, we come to The Little Mermaid. 

I had really mixed feelings about this one at first, because why would Ursula stay in disguise as Vanessa and be content with manipulating humans when she could just rule Atlantica? I was further dismayed to see them using the canon from the 3rd Little Mermaid movie when it came to her sisters. 

This drives me insane. The original movie CLEARLY spells out the age order of the sisters. IT IS LITERALLY IN A SONG. 

Aquata. 

Andrina. 

Arista.

Attina. 

Adella.

Alana.

Ariel. 

That is the correct order. I will accept nothing otherwise. The old chapter book series sticks by that. 

I was bitterly disappointed that the author didn't use the rather blank slates of the sisters to create characters for them, but she wrote them off as forcing Ariel to rule as punishment for the death of Triton while they spent their time on frivolity. It's hinted later that this frivolity is how their grieve their mother, but as Ariel points out, that was over a hundred years ago.  

Yeah, I have no idea how mermaids age. Ariel was 16, yet her mother died 100+ years ago, so one mer year is many, many human years. It's been 5 or 6 years since Ursula defeated Triton, so figure Ariel is 21 or 22, but actually well over 100. 

Anyway, Scuttle is still alive and does some spying on Vanessa. He realizes she's still got King Triton alive in polyp form, so he quickly gets the news to Ariel, who as I mentioned is Queen of the Seas. Ariel is still mute but communicates in sign language, using an old signed form of the mer language. 

Ariel goes to the castle to try to find her father, able to become human thanks to the power of the trident. And yes, there's some bitterness that her father could have made her human all along. 

So thus begins the adventure. Ariel is aided on land by Scuttle, but as he's quite old, it's mostly his great grandgull Jona that's helping. Ariel ends up stealing the nautilus necklace while Vanessa is bathing and gets her voice back pretty early on, but this also alerts Vanessa that Ariel is there and it frees Eric from the spell she's had on him (and the entire town) for years. Eric and Ariel team up and rekindle old feelings while working together to find King Triton and stop Vanessa, who's amusing herself by trying to cause a bunch of wars. 

And...get this...Ursula's big final plan is to cast a spell that summons the Elder Gods, who will give her power on land, as she has none. (Likewise, the trident doesn't work on land.) It even uses a twisted Lovecraftian language. 

Yep. Ursula's gonna summon Cthulhu. Classic.

I started out disliking this, but ended up enjoying it quite a lot. Attina in the role of the oldest sister shows up the most of the other 6 and is the only one to really get a personality. She's snarky and sounds a bit silly compared to the well-read Attina that's my favorite, but she ended up being a decent character. I still swap her with Aquata in my head though. As it should be. All the old favorites are there: Sebastian, Scuttle, Flounder, Carlotta the maid, Grimsby, Max. And they're joined by Jona, a badass older woman tattoo artist named Argent, and Vareet, Vanessa's young servant girl. It's a pretty fun ride and all the questions you have at the beginning do get answered by the end.

Disney's Twisted Tales: Reflection

I let myself fall behind on these again. I'm honestly not sure why it took me three attempts to finally finish this book. This is a good series, but I'm constantly pulled away from it by other things. 

But I'm taking a break from historical reading, so it's a good time to work through my backlog of Twisted Disney. 

Reflection is obviously based on Mulan. I would say this one was far less dark than the previous three installments. It's my favorite so far though. 

Basically, Li Shang is injured protecting Mulan from Shan Yu after she fires the cannon that causes the avalanche. Shang's father visits as a ghost and tells "Ping" he can help save Shang by travelling to Diyu, the underworld. 

So aided by the Li family guardian, a stone lion named ShiShi, Mulan is off on a perilous journey through the underworld. ShiShi is an entertaining character who provides some moments of levity, though not like Cri-Kee or Mushu. He's a better fit for the story because Mulan's actual guardians would have been a bit too comic. ShiShi has range. 

The story follows Mulan, Shang and ShiShi as they battle demons, ghosts and an enchantress, who are all out to stop them from making it out of Diyu before sunrise. It's a great adventure tale with a lot of introspective moments and character development. There are some parallels to the movie, but they're minimal. Though Shang does still say "You fight good." Excellent. 

CHLOE BY DESIGN: Balancing Act (Books 5-8)

So over 2 years ago, I found two of these books at Goodwill, ripped through the first one, bought the missing middle volume, and then promptly never finished the series. I picked up the first volume, which contains 4 books, and zipped through it yesterday, then started the second volume. I finished that tonight and I've started the third, so I will finally finish this series!

Chloe by Design is a series of 12 books, but they're most easily bought in the 3 bind-up editions, which contain 4 books each. 

The cover to the left here is the second bind-up, containing books 5-8. 

As I did the first time, I'm going to show the covers for the individual books, though this time I'm not going to try to match them up to how the bind-up is broken up. 

So when we first met Chloe from Santa Cruz, CA, she was a contestant on a teen version of Design Diva (Project Runway). The first four books got her through the three auditions to New York City and then through the entire competition. I thought the competition part went a little quickly. Can't remember if I mentioned that in my first review or not, but it definitely felt that way this second read through. 

 

So now Chloe finds herself interning for a designer in New York City, which was her prize for winning the competition. She's living in a dorm at FIT, alongside other interns. Two are definitely in college. I can't remember how old the mean girl one is. But yeah, one is a mean girl who never gets to like Chloe because she feels she didn't earn her way to the internship. Reality TV may be silly, but some of the competition shows are no doubt competitions. Chloe definitely earned her prize. 

Most of the book is about Chloe's adventures in interning. 

She's in a different department for each 2 weeks of her 2-month internship. She starts out with Laura in knits and denims. Laura wasn't my favorite. She's clearly unorganized and I just didn't really like her. Chloe's one big mistake during her internship is something I still can't understand. She was doing her second internship at the time, with Taylor in dresses, but also doing 2 days a week still with Laura, who's basically such a mess that she needs an intern more than Taylor. Chloe is tasked with doing something with designing jackets, which are supposed to pair with the dresses she worked on with Taylor. So she uses designs she did for Taylor and Laura gets upset and says she cut corners. Yes, she used the work she did for Taylor...but aren't the jackets supposed to go with those dresses? I read this part over a few times and still have no idea what she did wrong. So that's why I don't like Laura much. Taylor is uptight and can be cold, but I liked her better. 

Chloe's third two weeks are with Michael in PR and then the same two days with Laura still. This had some way more interesting tasks and I liked it the best of the internship divisions. 

The majority of the book really is serious details about interning, which is pretty cool, because it has Chloe mostly choosing her internship over Jake, her friend-possibly-boyfriend from the first books. She also never stoops to any sort of bad level with Madison the mean girl, who digs her own grave during Fashion Week. 

Chloe is a likeable yet sometimes frustrating character. There's a scene where she's more interested in texts from Jake than listening to Michael and I wanted to smack her, especially because most of the department heads just give instructions and then leave the interns to it. She could have easily gotten her assignment then checked her phone when she was alone. Stupid. 

Chloe's BFF, Alex, from California visits during Fashion Week and ends up helping Chloe with the show, as the designer is happy for another volunteer. Not sure how realistic that is because Alex has zero experience, but I like her so whatever. In the two months Chloe has been gone, Alex suddenly cares about fashion and now has a boyfriend, both of which Chloe is happy about. 

Everything goes smoothly. Chloe is asked back for next summer and she's adjusted well to New York. She's made friends with the older interns and the mean one got herself in trouble so she won't be interning again. Chloe stays friends with Jake, even through some ups and downs, and they decide she's just plain too busy to balance him along with everything else. Very mature decision. I didn't find this one as fun or interesting as the competition one, but that's because it was more loaded with fashion details and less with fun places and challenges. It was still fun though.

Some Girls Are

Right to the point: Don't waste your time on this one. 

This is along the veins of Mean Girls only way worse. 

Regina is the main character. Yes, Regina. Ha. But not that Regina. She's the right hand woman to the school's mean queen bee, Anna. Regina fully admits they're the type of popular that parents fear. They're feared more than liked and that's how Anna wants it. 

The story opens at a party where everyone is drunk or drugged up or both. Regina, designated driver, goes looking for Anna to drive her home. She finds her passed out while Anna's boyfriend Donnie decides it's a great idea to try to rape Regina. Regina fights him off and flees the party, finding herself in front of Kara's house. Kara is a member of their clique so Regina goes in and tells her what happened. Kara's advice is to not tell Anna because Anna is the type of friend that will think Regina is after Donnie as opposed to believing her best friend was almost raped. 

Turns out Regina made the biggest mistake of the entire book by confiding in Kara. Kara hates Regina and Regina hates Kara. So why tell her? You're the type of mean girl who knows what's going to happen, but you do it anyway, Regina. Good job. 

Kara spins the incident in her favor and Regina is frozen out of the friend group, which leads to the entire book-long battle between Regina and her old clique. Regina is forced to sit with class outcast Michael, who's actually hot but when he had no interest in hanging out with the popular crew, they started rumors that he was borderline a school shooter and pretty much ruined his life, which became even more ruined after his mother was killed in a bridge collapse. 

Regina and Michael predictably end up together after he forgives her. Way too easily. Michael is the most likeable character in the book, but he's also stupid. Stupid to forgive a bully just because she's being bullied and stupid to carry his journal around school when he's written things in it that could be used against him. 

The only other likeable character is Liz, who used to be part of the popular group until Anna thought Liz and Regina were getting too close and forced Regina and the others to freeze her out. But Liz, unlike Michael, never forgives Regina. 

So you're expecting Mean Girl-type pranks, right? No. It begins with WHORE spray-painted on Regina's locker and a Facebook page called I Hate Regina Afton being created, but there are loads of actual physical altercations. Between the guys (predictable) AND the girls. Kara pushes Regina down the stairs. Regina does the same to Kara later on. The two constantly attack each other, slamming each other into lockers. It's Kara that's the true bitch, not Anna, who just sits back and watches mostly. But they're both equally bad in my opinion because of what they do with Regina's rape story. Kara uses it to her advantage, while Anna doesn't believe it, preferring to think her best friend fucked her boyfriend. 

The book culminates in Regina telling everyone in the school every dirty secret on her ex-friends that she has, which leads to Anna photocopying Michael's journal, including the page where he says he wants to kill everyone. See, he's stupid. Regina is also stupid enough to get in a car with these bitches and they drive her outside of town to kick her ass and leave her to walk home without her shoes. Anna punches her once then is a princess about it, but Kara unleashes on her. When she gets to school, Liz's friend sees her in the bathroom and goes to get Liz. Liz doesn't really want to help, having spent ages being tortured by Regina and company, but she "wanted to see it." However, when Regina tells her what Anna has on Michael, Liz goes to Anna and threatens to tell the principal what she heard two of the bitches saying about the fight in the bathroom. Anna gives Liz the photocopied pages, Regina ends up with Michael, Anna and Kara get absolutely zero comeuppance really. 

Regina is an annoying character because she is mostly cowardly. She goes to Michael's mom, a psychiatrist while she's alive, because the Liz incident made her unable to eat. She still doesn't eat much, chowing down antacid like it's candy. She's clearly wracked with guilt but it doesn't help you like her any more. She believes she deserves what she gets and aside from the attempted rape, she really does. So do the other girls and guys taken down throughout the book. 

I raised this point with a different book, but it is even more apparent here. The adults are NOWHERE in this story. Regina's parents are presented as useless and she tells them almost nothing. The principal is a threat and other teachers appear to hand out simple punishments for simple things, but how in the hell aren't there repercussions for all the fights? This book is completely unrealistic because so many of these incidents are so public that there's no way they'd fall under adult radar. 

So unrealistic story plus unlikeable characters equals I wasted my time with this.

The Silent Patient

 
Oh, my gods, you guys. This is an amazing book.

Artist Alicia Berenson is found standing with slashed wrists near her husband's body. He's tied to a chair and has been shot in the face five times. Only her fingerprints are on the gun. She survives her injuries, but refuses to speak. The only clue she gives is a self-portrait she finished during house arrest before her trial which is inscribed with the name Alcestis. 

Years later, Alicia still refuses to speak and languishes in an institution called the Grove. Enter psychotherapist Theo Faber, who's determined to help Alicia. 

The book follows Theo's journey to break Alicia's silence while dealing with his own personal traumas. It's interspersed with entries from Alicia's diary from the days leading up to the murder. 

And it has one of the best twists I've ever read. I adore a good twist. 

I'm excited because his newest book comes out in a few days and, like this one, there are ties to Greece.