My name is Dorothy Gale, and I think I might be dead.
When my dog Toto and I got swept up in a twister, we landed in hell. A very colorful hell. Like a rainbow dripping in blood. Now it looks as though this dreadful underworld plagued with vampires, zombies, and shifters will be the site of my eternal damnation.
They say this terrifying land called Oz isn’t hell or purgatory, that escape is possible, but first I must survive the journey down the blood-soaked yellow brick road to the only place in Oz where vampires dare not tread—The City of Emeralds.
With enchanted footwear and the help of my three new friends—a friendly zombie, a massive shifter lion, and a heartless axe murderer of evil night creatures who also happens to be the hottest guy I’ve ever seen—Toto and I have a fighting chance to make it to the Vampire Free Zone. When we get there, I must convince the most powerful wizard in this magical land of monsters to send us out of this radiant nightmare and return us to the world of the living. They say he’s just as frightening as this monstrous land, that he detests visitors, and even the most horrifying creatures cower in his presence, but I must seek him out. And when I find him, I’ll do whatever it takes to make him send me home.
I really wanted to love this book. When I read the description, it immediately caught my attention. A retelling of Dorothy in the land of Oz, but with monsters? Sign me up.
I did not love this book. I barely enjoyed it at times. This book took me entirely too long to read only to not finish because I couldn’t be pressed to pick it up. Don’t get me wrong, there were moments that shined in this book. The friendship between Dorothy and the Oz Trio was very well written. The descriptions of Oz were so vivid, I could see it in my mind. The world building, or the revamping of the world of Oz was done very well. That’s about all I can say good about this book.
I had three major gripes about this book. First gripe is the use of SAT/ACT words when Dorothy is our narrator. Dorothy is supposed to be 17 from Kansas and hasn’t finished high school yet. Her school is very small, and I’m pretty certain they’re not the best school in the state of Kansas since it’s in the middle of everywhere. If the story was told in 3rd person omniscient, then I could understand the use of such words. But this is from the eyes of a 17-year-old girl, and I’m going to take a bet that she doesn’t really know these words. It sounded like the author had a thesaurus next to her the whole time and just wanted to fancy up the writing. It didn’t need it. The descriptions were good enough on their own, that using big fancy words just bogs the writing down. Also, the overuse of certain words like scintillation was aggravating as hell. The writing bogged this story down, and it appeared to be a clever way to disguise the lack of character development with Dorothy.
My second gripe is the forced romance between Nick and Dorothy. Oh my Ozma, did these two annoy the ever living crap out of me. They’ve known each other for maybe a total of a month, if we take into consideration all the time they spent walking to Oz, the time they spent in Oz, and then heading to kill the Vampire Witch of the West, and the time Dorothy was trapped there. They had known each other less than that before Dorothy is all, “Oh I’m so in love with Nick!” Then he’s all, “Oh, I’m so in love with Dorothy!” Before we’re even 70% into the book, they’ve proclaimed their love for each other and how they will never love anyone else in the entire realms. Hold up, girly. You’re 17. You got your whole life ahead of you. Slow down for a second. There’s even a part after they return to the City of Emeralds (because Emerald City was too…plain?) that she refers to him as her husband. NO. NO NO NO NO. That’s not how it works, and they just became insufferable with their misery that he wants her to leave and she wants to stay and fight with him, and they’re just not meant to be together because they are both TOO STUPID TO FUNCTION. This romance wasn’t needed. Or better yet, this romance had time to grow.
My third gripe was this book didn’t know if it wanted to be young adult or a new adult novel. There were moments that were not young adult appropriate, and all the talk about sex kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. We had a character flat out call Dorothy a place for Nick to park his cock, and I was so flabbergasted that this made it through an editor’s pen. It felt like the author wanted to make this an adult fiction but was trying to bank on the young adult readers, so she aged down Dorothy and Nick, but left all the inappropriate dialogue and scenes. I’m not a prude by any standards, and I love me some smut, but if this was written towards young adults, mainly teens, then the all the talk about sex, friends with benefits, having flings needs to be cleaned up a bit. That would also take out a lot of unnecessary scenes between Nick and Dorothy. Good Lord was there way too many of the same repetitive nonsense between these two.
Okay, I have final gripe. That was Dorothy’s silver boots. These literally created plot armor around Dorothy, and soon because that all threats to her life became predictable, because of these boots. They created this armor that made her this badass of a warrior even though she hadn’t fought in her entire 17 years. Nothing was going to touch her, and the only time she didn’t benefit from the boots, they still protected her. She was never in any actual danger, so all the scenes with monsters and danger fell flat. If our main character isn’t at risk of dying, being hurt, or being turned into a vampire or zombie, then what is the point of having those fight scenes? The boots were too powerful, and it took away from the suspense and danger this book was trying to create in a land full of monsters.
This book had a lot of potential, but it needs an editor that is going to be brutal to it and take out half of the unnecessary drama between Nick and Dorothy. Also there were a lot of typos, but nothing that took me out of the book. I didn’t need help with that, I stayed mostly on the outer edges of the book most of the time anyway. I didn’t finish it so I have no idea how it ends. I just couldn’t be bothered with it anymore.
