And after the prince is thrown out, the moon dragon and the princess continue to share the day and night and live happily ever after. Maybe magic ends with me and it will never cross your path, but I want you to remember that survival is an art.

But rather, uses tropes , repeating ideas and language, cliches, mixed metaphor and boring images to project “girl power” which evokes such a lack of sincerity, that the intended feminist ideas in the book are cancelled out and falsified in the sheer light of inadequacy. Gill needed an editor or publisher that spoke up about how any boy/man that picks up her book is likely to be put off by the end. There’s also a lot of hatred towards men sprinkled throughout, as well as the message that if you are a wife/mother/whatever then you are not living an important, full life or. They may want you to believe I was simple being brave, but anxiety makes more heroes than history would care to repeat.

I enjoyed the way Gill kind of climbs into these characters in the stories, whether they are villains or heroes, and enables the reader to see them in a different perspective. I hardly ever read poetry, but sometimes some books just seem so interesting that they don’t leave you until you pick them up. Also, if you're a shipper of Disney Princesses and Princes, you probably won't enjoy some of the darker interpretations the author pursued 😂 Wanted to like it, just didn't enjoy it, unfortunately! Remind each and every girl out there that youth and beauty are not her shackles, nor her only currency. Even if this turns out to be my token poetry book for the year, I’m so glad to have made the choice.

But mostly the content is on the affirmative, self-help-y side, which I don’t find appealing in my reading. In these short stories and poems you’ll find well known fairytales with insights into characters, backstories and different endings. There’s empowering women to be independent and standing up to the patriarchy, and then there’s being an asshole. So instead I will leave Fierce Fairytales off my gifting list and be conscious of the rhetoric around me that all the lovely children in my life (none of which are my own) may be subject to on any given day.

Imagine fairytales where the line between heroes and villains are blurred, where there is violence in supposed Prince Charming’s, and where the girl is independent, brave and smart- and can fight her own battles against monsters. Was pretty good until halfway through when I noticed it kept recycling its own ideas over and over again. The language is great, all the self-love poems are fabulous, and I found so many good nuggets to remember for later.