Dorothy Must Die
Author: Danielle Paige
Release Date: April 1st 2014
Publisher: HarperCollins
Source: Bookstore Bargain
Genre(s): YA, Fantasy, Retellings, Fairytales
Spoilers: Mild
Rating: ★★★★☆
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Amy Gumm is just a girl from Kansas with a not-so-great life, no friends, and a mom who has given up. Life for her is just something to get through until she can get away. It all falls apart one day when she’s sent home from school for fighting back against a bully. The day her mom leaves her in the midst of an oncoming tornado.
Amy flies in the trailer, just to end up in Oz. As a Kansan, she knows the story of Dorothy and Oz well, but this is not the Oz in the books or movie. It has changed, and not for the better. After being captured and meeting Dorothy, Amy teams up with the Wicked to bring Good back. However, nothing is what it seems in Oz, and Amy isn’t sure who to trust. All she knows to be true, is that Dorothy must die.
Paige has brilliantly rewritten Oz. This retelling is everything you can hope for: it’s new, different, but retains the magic of the original. Amy is a character one can really relate to, with all the gumption of a teen and none of the idea of how to proceed. The Lion, Scarecrow, and Tinman are terrifying re-imaginings of who they used to be, with their leader Dorothy being the scariest of them all. The magic of Oz, and Baum’s story is captured by Paige and will keep your attention through out the book.
It is the first book in a series so, as you can expect, it ends on a cliffhanger, and most of the fighting action does take place near the end of the novel. This does not make the rest of the story completely boring or dull in the least. This novel gives us a great platform to learn about the new Oz, Amy, Dorothy and her gang, and who/what the Wicked really are. It is a great little book, and one that I have been recommending to everyone who is looking for a new book.
Final Thoughts:
This book kept my attention from the first page. I loved the new Oz, and Amy. As a fellow Kansan, she is everything a girl from Kansas really is – strong, capable, skeptical, and smart. She is one of the few new YA characters that really could be a normal person, if she wasn’t tied up in Oz fighting Dorothy. It was a fun read, and I can’t wait to get my hands on The Wicked Will Rise. If you love retellings, magic, or books you can’t put down, pick up this book.
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