As I mentioned to @thelilylav , I think that Suzanne Selfor's works were a sign of the moment when EAH books stopped being fantasy for teens and became a Mattel gadget. And It's rotted in the whitewashing of the story, (not only the colorism towards characters like Briar or Cedar) as approach to writing the story which involves a centrism that erased the class-based political theme that characterised the original series.
Note: Not everything I'm about to say reflects my personal taste on Selfor books (i'm a big fan of A semi-charming Life). It is a compendium of all the narrative choise that were done to lighten the content of the books.
It can essentially be divided into three macro sections:
sugarcoating the pill regarding many destinies. Duchess, and this is said in the first book, is destined to die like, but in NTV it is retconned to a simple "turn into a swan"*. Ginger's mother in TUOTA is clearly an evil woman who tried to eat H&G, but Selfor retconned it to a misunderstanding. By doing so, however, you significantly lower the narrative stakes because the rebels' cause becomes relatively useless. If Ginger doesn't have to do anything in Hansel and Gretel, why would she rebel? If Duchess doesn't die, what's the problem? We're in a magical world, after all, and any fairy godmother could turn her back into a human.
The Decentralization of the Commoners-Rebels: Virtually all of Suzanne Selfor's books focus on the royals. Sure, we still have some rebel characters, but they're all very save and royal options. Darling rebels but is still a princess, Poppy is canonically a centrist. Plus they are both destiny-less so their off the book is not that risky. Ginger is the only rebel who's also poor, but her plot, rather than having that marginalized connotation, revolves around Hopper. Where is Hunter? Where is Cedar? Where are all the characters that had class struggle in the First series. The necessity of rebelling is a more personal thing at this point—Darling's problem isn't about class, but about gender norms
Soft Royal woobification:The royals are canonically the antagonistic class. Even the most open-minded among them is still biased (aka Ashlynn), and rebellion has always been a class thing. But in Selfor's books we have returned to that "Royals and Rebels" as just two nice factions to choose from. In Shannon Hale's, even if we read her PoV, it's clear that Apple is in the wrong because she's classist. In Selfor's books not really,and some of theme actually come out of It more clean than they should. Take for example NTV—sure, it's not the first time Sparrow betrey Duchess,however, in the early versions of their relationship, his betrayal serves as karma for Duchess's classism, (she thinks he's dumb because he's a commoner, but he's smarter than her)+ It's a clever parallel to Swan Lake (if you want i could write about It) Here, however, her being awfull becomes a mere "she was insecure and a perfectionist and she let herself be exploited." **
This post is already long, but I could go on. But essentially, what I'm trying to say is that Suzanne Selfor's books present a much more clean and politically correct Ever After High that favors the princess aesthetic over the fairy tale deconstruction narrative that the original series gave us.
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