Twisted Tales - Part of Your World by Liz Braswell

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Disney. I only recently found these Twisted Tales books and have slowly been collecting them. I currently have 4 but I decided to start with Part of Your World. I was a HUGE The Little Mermaid fan growing up so it was a no brainer.

Twisted Tales take a Disney story and put a spin on it. This particular book followed The Little Mermaid only this takes place 5 years after the event we are all aware of, only in this story... Ursula won....! So here we follow a still voiceless Ariel, now in charge of Atlantica as Queen (as punishment for her behaviour and losing her father in the process to win the heart of a human man) and Ursula (still posing as Vanessa and using Ariel's voice) married to Prince Eric (who is still under Ursula's spell, as well as everyone else on the boat at the wedding), with a defeated Triton no where to be found. Five years on Ariel finds out her father may still be alive so she goes in search of him on land.

Now like I said, I am a massive Disney fan. I was super excited to start this! However I found myself struggling instantly. I kept saying to myself 'but this wouldn't happen! This isn't how it went! Well isn't that convenient!' I was at war with the story because some times I felt like it was doing Disney an injustice, like how could Ursula have won?! And why are some characters acting differently?! For me it just wasn't like the Disney I knew and it was hard to accept anything that contradicted the movie (in case you didn't know i'm clearly not a fan of change 😆). It took me a while to accept that of course this is different.... Its Twisted Tales! It has to flip it and make it it's own otherwise what would be the point! Also of course things happened 'conveniently'. As much as it is Twisted Tales it is still Disney! It is a mix of both and therefore it is hardly going to be over complicated is it! I guess I am so used to reading other genres I forgot this.

Also I am ashamed to say that at times I felt I was reading something too childish than I should have been spending my time on. Ok none of the 'you're 32 years old reading Disney' jokes. But seriously the writing felt childish, but this is coming from someone who had just finished a book about very graphic murders with lots of twist and shocks.... Very different to this! I am ashamed to admit it because actually the writing was incredibly good. It was descriptive and flowed very well making it an easy to read style book. Braswell did a great job using watery descriptions and I believe she made up some of her own words for certain things Mer-folk could use to describe things. She created a whole kingdom of rules and its politics, and kept all the characters' styles as closely as she thought they could be 5 years after a tragic event. I believe I thought the way I did purely because of the subject. Mermaids, Sea Witches and talking fish.... I mean can you blame me!

But for anyone with an inner child, or an actual child(!), wanting to read something fun and with a story line you most probably know about, then I definitely recommend this book. While having the twist on the story it does not stray away from Disney. It isn't scary, there are no curse words and also a few one liners from our favourite crab and seagull that will no doubt make you smile. For anyone else like me into reading really dark and gritty stories but want to give it a go, I want to remind you to not take it seriously! There will not be a deep meaningful plot that is hard to follow, there will be times you maybe want a sick bucket because of all the love references, or to perhaps roll your eyes at all the convenient situations that arise. But chill! It is after all why we love Disney!

Twisted Tales - Part of Your World by Liz Braswell

Pages - 487

Goodreads rating - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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