First Frost by Liz DeJesus

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Book summary:

For generations, the Frost family has run the Museum of Magical and Rare Artifacts, handing down guardianship from mother to daughter, always keeping their secrets to “family only.”
Gathered within museum’s walls is a collection dedicated to the Grimm fairy tales and to the rare items the family has acquired: Cinderella’s glass slipper, Snow White’s poisoned apple, the evil queen’s magic mirror, Sleeping Beauty’s enchanted spinning wheel…
Seventeen-year-old Bianca Frost wants none of it, dreaming instead of a career in art or photography or…well, anything except working in the family’s museum. She knows the items in the glass display cases are fakes because, of course, magic doesn’t really exist.
She’s about to find out how wrong she is.

         When I was first asked to read this book, I was a bit skeptical. The reason is that little word that this book carries within - retellings. I'm not a hug fan of these but I decided to give it a try anyhow. It turned out to be a good decision.

         First of with retelling part. Well, I'm not sure how to classify this one but it's different from other retellings I encountered with. Mostly this book is not based on only one fairy tale but it manages to intertwine some of the most famous fairy tales together. But at the same time is has new and unique elements.

        Bianca Frost, our main character in this book is a seventeen-year-old girl who comes from a family that owns a really interesting museum called the Museum of Magical and Rare Artifacts. This museum is full of the fairy tale items like Cinderella's glass slipper, Show White's poisoned apple, the evil queen's magic mirror and much  more. Even though Bianca is used to these items as she has grown up around them still it's hard not to question the possibility that they are real items from the fairy tales, even though she is old enough to believe in that. Until one day she sees unbelievable and soon enough must find what's real and what's fake.

       What I liked the most here is the family relationship between Bianca and her parents. It was wonderful to see how much they care for each other even though magic separated them. Another thing is that while this story has many elements of a fairy tales at the same time it's completely easy to believe in it. Beside the all well known characters I'm happy that we meet some other not so much popular fairy tales and their characters. It was a nice reminder without changing the memories so much. They're still same old twisted and complicated characters.

       One element that truly was surprising was the whole story behind "happily ever after". It's truly interesting how author managed to work around it.

Rating: 4 stars. 

Until the next time,

***NOTE: Copy of this book was kindly provided by the author, Liz DeJesus. Thank you! 
I'm not paid for writing this review - I do it as a lover of written word. All opinions are personal.