Review: Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige

Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige

HarperCollins, April 2014

I loved the idea of this book – it sounded really different. Kind of scary, too, which I don’t often find in YA books I choose to read. Like a lot of kids from my generation, I grew up watching The Wizard of Oz over and over and over again. We even watched the second film a lot, too – the one with the pumpkin head, Mombi and a young Fairuza Balk.

Amy – a young girl from Kansas – lands in Oz only to find out that Dorothy did come back – and afterwards, became a terrifying dictator, stealing of Oz’s magic for herself. It will be up to Amy to take down each of Dorothy’s  henchmen (Tin Woodman, Scarecrow, Lion) before killing Dorothy herself.

When I got a copy to take home from work, I quickly read the first page, and the writing definitely had me hooked, I liked Amy’s voice – it felt natural (and similar, I suppose, to a lot of the other contemporary YA narrators that I’ve read and liked). Before I had a chance to officially start the book, however, I came across this article from someone’s Goodreads’ review. I hadn’t heard of Full Fathom Five until then, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t want to support it – I  consoled myself that it was at least a library copy, not something I personally had chosen to spend money on.

The beginning of the book was great – I was really into it when Amy’s trailer lands in Oz due to a tornado (she is not oblivious to this irony or coincidence, either, which is good). I liked meeting the green-eyed boy, as well as Indigo the goth munchkin and Ollie the wingless-winged monkey. It was exciting to see Oz again, reimagined and darker – the corruption was frightening. The Tin Woodman leads the Tin Soldiers – Oz’s new found pseudo police force enforcing Dorothy’s rule, physically. They were terrifying (frightening humans melded with machinery – there is, I kid you not, a bicycle with a human head attached it – creeeepy).

I started to get bored during Amy’s training scenes on the mountain – I am occasionally annoyed at the single montage leading towards superhero-like powers as anyone else, but  there were chapters in the middle of the book where Amy meets the Order of the Wicked, and then is trained on how to fight, use magic, and be a lady so that she can infiltrate the Emerald Palace in order to get close to Dorothy for her assassination. Okay – I’ll give you, that last sentence sounded pretty bad ass. But I just didn’t believe it or feel it, and therefore it felt like these scenes went on too long.

Not to mention – there was her blossoming relationship with Nox. I had read in a Goodreads review that it was refreshing not to have any love-triangles – to which I agreed. But the whole book – I kept thinking – okay – so she met the beautiful green eyed boy first …. So if there isn’t a love triangle – what is all this Nox junk? I just couldn’t get into him. I was thinking maybe he’d die … lol. I was hoping for it at one scene. Spoiler alert – it doesn’t happen (well, in this book anyway). But the un-love-triangle is resolved, and the end will explain all. I sort of laughed at myself for not guessing it sooner.

Once Amy gets to the castle to start her undercover work as a part of Dorothy’s plethora of maids, things get interesting again. All I have to say is – that last Jellia scene? Gave me goosebumps. Very powerful (oh, but that last-last Jellia scene was just scary and terrifying … talk to me after you read the book).

There was a significant amount of action at the end of the book to keep me going. I think I’ll try to read the second one in the series once it comes out (library copy again, though, I wouldn’t spend money on it even if it hadn’t been Fathom Five). I am definitely intrigued to see how it all plays out.

Overall, I think the story was stronger in concept than it actually was on page. A lot of ideas felt surface level or superficial. There were powerful moments, but there was also a decent amount of fluff.  Overall, I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads, because it did surprise me at the end – and that Jellia scene was awesome – if a book gives me goosebumps, I have to give it a little more credit.  I will also casually try and check out the second book in the series – which is more than I can say for some of the other YA trilogies I’ve started.

I’m trying to think of read-alikes for this book, but I’m coming up blank. I’d love to say something fantastical yet scary, like, the Hunger Games, but it was nowhere near as terrifying, exciting, or deep, so I don’t want to even put them in the same sentence. I’m going to go with Cinder by Marissa Meyer – another fractured fairy tale (Oz, was, I believe, considered to be the first American fairy tale). I’d also recommend reading this book if you’ve read or watched The Wizard of Oz, likewise if you’ve read Wicked by Gregory Maguire.