Reviews

Faraway: Fairy Tales for the Here and Now by Gayle Forman, Nic Stone, Soman Chainani, Rainbow Rowell, Ken Liu

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sarahanne8382's review against another edition

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4.0

A fractured fairy tale collection for older teens that was a bit more intense than I expected, but I loved it.

mollyalbonetti's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious reflective fast-paced

4.0

maryehavens's review against another edition

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4.0

I love fairy tales and I really enjoy fairy tale adaptations to an extent. I think they are best served as short stories.
Rating from favorite to least favorite:
"Hazel and Gray" by Nic Stone (a twist on Hansel and Gretel with a brothel element)
"The Wickeds" by Gayle Forman (evil stepmothers side of the story)
"The Prince and the Troll" by Rainbow Rowell (forbidden love story with Starbucks element)
"The Princess Game" by Soman Chainani (serial killer at a prep school kills off girls in princess ways)
"The Cleaners" by Ken Liu (memories are retained on objects)
The Liu story was the most unique but what fairy tale was it based on? I couldn't figure that out the entire time. I thought it was interesting but a bit too sci-fi for me. My husband has read a few Liu books and enjoyed them so I was interested in this one but it was just not clicking.
LOVED the Stone short story!! What a great twist. It was also the one that was the most complete - a few others kind of left you hanging. Forman's story was great too in that it was a major feminist tale where the silenced men get a story and it ain't good.
Love the concepts, excited to find more fairy tale twists.

sandhills_kt's review against another edition

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3.0

These short stories were a mixed bag so 3 stars in total.
- Hazel & Grey ⭐⭐⭐
- The Cleaners ⭐⭐
- The Wickeds ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- The Princess Game ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- The Prince and the Troll ⭐⭐

library_ann's review against another edition

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3.0

A weird collection of retellings. I really only liked the first story ("The Prince and the Troll" by Rainbow Rowell). The strange growing friendship of the two main characters was fun to watch, until it wasn't fun anymore at the end.

"Hazel and Grey" was upsetting and oddly passive, like here we are now, and here's what Grey did previously to set us up for this position that we're in. Like, why not show us what Grey is doing, and give us the sense of danger and peril.

"The Princess Game" also had an ick factor, but was easy to solve.

"The Cleaners" had an interesting premise -- when humans touch things, they leave a residue that carries their emotions and mental state, which people who subsequently touch the things can feel -- so everyone starts wearing gloves when they can, and avoids too much touching (but apparently they don't stop buying random knick-knacks and what-nots to limit the things they leave residue on). I could not figure out which fairy tale this was retelling though.

I liked "The Wickeds" too, for being an interesting approach to the evil stepmother trope, and then the twist at the end ...

Spoiler

that the princesses now have daughters of their own, and the cycle of control or abuse or whatever continues to the next generation!...