This is a fantasy book about four half-sisters, Goldie, Liyana, Scarlet, and Bea. "Goldie (earth) manipulates plants and gives life. Liyana (water) controls rivers and rain. Scarlet (fire) has electricity at her fingertips. Bea (air) can fly."
I won a copy from LibraryThing and was hoping for a good read. I like a good fantasy read. Not so. It (in my opionion) is not a teen read. I have tried twice to read this book and cannot get past the language.
I will give it a 1 star. ( )

This book should come with major trigger warnings for trauma/content. It contains: child abuse, sexual abuse, self-harm, depression, suicidal thoughts, incest, injury, dementia, loss, fat-shaming, slut-shaming, racism – yes that’s a lot and I’ve probably missed some.

I was sent a free copy of the book via Netgalley in return for a review.

Please head over to my blog to read my full review: https://geeking-by.net/the-sisters-grimm-review/

As a lover of dark fairy tales, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the word Grimm was not the first thing that grabbed my attention. I’m also a fan of the TV show Grimm so I was curious to see another work of fiction that seemed to be using the term as an identifier. Did these Sisters Grimm have anything in common with the Grimms from the show? Were they monster hunters too? Or was there something else happening here? I had no idea but I wanted to find out!

My feelings towards this book were quite ambiguous throughout; I didn’t dislike it, but I didn’t love it either. I continued reading eagerly to know what was going to happen, to follow the trail and find out how the mystery ended. However, at about 60% I began to realise that it was going to take a monumental showdown, and a massive twist at the conclusion to redeem the book in my eyes – and The Sisters Grimm failed to do that.

There were a few clever twists at the end that I didn’t see coming but overall it ended as I expected and that is not a good sign for me. I like to be surprised, I like to be shocked and have my heart torn from my chest, thrown to the ground and stomped all over. I don’t like reading a book that makes me roll my eyes and sigh at yet more trauma, more drama being thrown at the poor characters once again.

As the book went on I found it increasingly difficult to connect with it. The characters themselves were flimsy, based on and named after fairy tales in a way that reminded me of my time as a role player. They all have a Mary-Sue quality to them; the naive blue-eyed golden-haired girl, the fiery redhead, the token immigrant and the promiscuous Latino. The inconsistencies did not just stop with the weak characters either; it dips and dives between first/second person and past and presence tense, and the timelines are all over the place, darting from the present to the past without warning with multiple authors (7 at my counting).

The Sisters Grimm is the author’s first foray into fantasy, however, I would argue heavily against classing this as a fantasy novel. For me, it is magical realism rather than fantasy or urban fantasy. It's also being put forward as a fantasy novel by the publishers and it’s is the first book in a trilogy which is honestly baffling to me. While I have many issues with the book the ending wasn’t one of them; there were no loose ends, everything was wrapped up and it reads like a perfect stand-alone novel.

Trauma was the biggest theme of this book, which is why I’ve ended up devoting an entire sub-section of the review to the topic. It was quite troublesome to find so much trauma in this book because a) it’s supposed to be a fantasy novel and b) you’re someone with PTSD and mental health conditions. While I’m no stranger to fantasy novels including forms of trauma – after all you’d need to be living under a rock not to at least be familiar with the violence and trauma present in Game of Thrones series – I don’t expect it to be at the forefront of the novel. Fantasy to me is about the theme of fantasy, the world-building, the magic, and anything else is character development. Take all that away and you’ve just got contemporary fiction, possibly chick lit. Either way; not fantasy and certainly not something I would have read if it hadn’t come attached with the fantasy label. ( )

I am going to caveat this review with this: I love books that have multi POVs, break the 4th wall, and have erratic timelines. These are books that I seek out. The issue comes when these type of books are poorly executed it is painfully obvious. There is no saving the plot because it depends too much on these specific qualities to be done perfectly.

By all accounts, this book should have been amazing. The basis of the story was fascinating, the plot was strong, but if I hadn't known better I would have thought this was a debut novel by an indie author that needs a strong developmental edit.

The 6 POVs should have been written stronger, really sucked you into to all of their worries, and had you rooting for characters by the end, but the abrupt short scene cuts were jarring, like flipping channels on a tv just catching snippets of conversation. Many of the characters didn't get enough time for you to even remember their name much less qualities about themselves to make you want to root for them. The forth wall breaks were strange and didn't really add to the plot over all, I would have rathered more time with the characters. Learning more about their magic, more about their mothers, just more to make us want them to survive and better understand the dynamics of the world.

I feel like the author was trying to write literature. I personally am a strong believer in the fact that a person can't sit down and try to write literature, it is only through reader acknowledgement that a fiction book can become literature. When someone tries to specifically write literature it turns out much like this book. Confusing, boring, and lacking in all the wrong places. There are good bones here, just not an enjoyable, engulfing story that leaves you book drunk contemplating life meaning etc.

The entire book was building to what seemed would be a very climaxing life shattering ending, but it ended up being very lackluster. One chapter later and business as usual, no major shake ups or lasting outcomes from what they discover on their birthday.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. I received this book via NetGalley. ( )

I really wanted to love this and just couldn't quite get there. I think the novel was incredibly ambitious, and perhaps the author overreached in what she was trying to do. I think there are seeds of a great idea in there, and parts that felt really exciting and made me want more, but overall the reading experience was not one of my favorites.

I've enjoyed some of Menna van Praag's earlier books, and the premise of this book sounded wonderful, but it left me with mixed feelings.

The individual characters were interesting and their individual stories intrigued, but I feel like I spent half of the book being entirely confused. The changes in the multiple points of view threw me the most because I was always confused about who was speaking and had to go back to the chapter title to keep people straight. Maybe their voices were too similar in the story-telling, maybe it was the jumping around - usually, I'm good with time switches and character changes, but something here just didn't click.

I loved idea of the Grimm and choosing between good and evil. The writing was descriptive, and at times really lyrical and visual, but I did like the characters, but I really struggled to follow what was going on at times, ( )