Review: Unenchanted by Chandra Hahn

Mina Grime is unlucky, unpopular and uncoordinated, that is until she saves her crush's life on a field trip, changing her High School status from loser to hero overnight. But with her newfound fame brings misfortune as an old family curse come to light. For Mina is descended from the Brothers Grimm and has inherited all of their unfinished fairy tale business. Which includes trying to outwit a powerful Story from making her its next fairytale victim.

To break the fairy tale curse on her family and stop these deadly events, Mina must finish the tales until the very Grimm end.

Kindle Edition, 233 pages

Published 2011 by Chanda Hahn 

(summary grabbed from GoodReads)

The idea for Unenchanted itself is amazing and I can honestly say I was sucked in for most of the book.  However, I almost want to steer anyone planning on reading away as the hiccups in this one were pretty bad.  In YA literature, there are many great fairy tale retellings, so I can’t recommend a book that I struggled through at points when there are so many others that I whole-heartedly enjoyed to the last word.

What I did like about Mina was that she did seem like a teenager.  Her voice actually felt like that of a young girl. Other than that, Mina was not particularly likeable.  She was your typical “normal” young adult main character, made complete with shyness and an inferiority complex.  If you’re looking for a strong heroine kicking Grimm-fairy-tale-ass and taking names, look elsewhere.  Mina was borderline whiney at times and grated on my nerves.

Most of the dialogue was atrocious.  It wasn’t that it wasn’t authentic for a teenager, it wasn’t authentic for anyone.  No one talks like that.  The only character whose dialogue sounded like a real person was Mina’s best friend, Nan.  Nan had more personality than the rest of the cast of characters combined and was incredibly likeable.  Unfortunately, Nan is not the main character.

But the most upsetting thing about Unenchanted was the amount of typos.  There were misspelled words, words missing, and other issues on top of that.  This is completely unacceptable in a published book, self published or otherwise.  If you’re going to publish a book, it should be something you poured your heart into and have gone over repeatedly.  Clearly, the author put absolutely no time into editing her book.

Nevertheless, I am still intrigued with where this is going as Unenchanted did have an interesting and original plot.  I probably will pick up the Chandra Hahn’s next book in the series.  I guess this makes it a mixed up review...at first I'm like "Don't read it!" and then "I'm gonna read the sequel."  What I mean is: Unenchanted is flawed, but the story is original and interesting.

Final Thought:  6 out of 10 taodstuls

This review is also posted on GoodReads