Reviews

Ash by Malinda Lo

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tregina's review against another edition

4.0

I've been meaning to read this book for ages and I have no idea what took me this long. Maybe because I love the idea of queer retellings of fairy tales and myth, but am so often disappointed with the result. I definitely was not disappointed with this one. There are some things that I would have liked to have seen done differently or explored in a different way but overall I thought it was very sweet with enough darkness to keep it interesting.

butchbatman's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

swaye's review against another edition

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1.0

Ugh I feel like I deserve a medal for getting through this mindnumbing snoozefest of a book.

nightmarebees's review against another edition

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slow-paced

3.75

i really wish i’d known about this book sooner, considering i was 13 and still assuming i was straight when it was first published. its queerness isn’t super explicit, because the world is trying to be more or less queernormative, though writing that looked a bit different in 2009 than it does for queer YA in the 2020s. still, to tell a lesbian story in which coming out wasn’t the main conflict was big for the time. i do wish kaisa entered the story earlier, because i would’ve liked to get to know her as well as we know ash.

as a cinderella retelling, i liked the use of fairies, fairy tales and culture/superstition. this was also before the big fae boom of the last few years, so it’s more true to folkloric fae. i only wish sidhean had entered the story earlier, as he and the actual magic don’t truly enter until the second half.

overall, my main issue with this was the balance of pacing between the first half and the second. the reveal of the Big Curse and its resolution moved very quickly within the last 50 pages, which felt rushed from the slow build of the first half getting to know ash and her life. i mostly just wish this was a longer book, which is honestly pretty high praise