The Wickeds

Gayle Forman

5 stars!!

This was by far the best short story of the series! And that’s a shame because this is the last story because most people will probably abandon the series before they get to this point. I nearly abandoned it after almost every story but decided not to because they’re short, free, and it’s good to have something to read on a device just in case. Still, most of the books in this series seemed unnecessarily confusing, to the point where I could not understand how some of them connected to the story they were supposed to be retelling at all. I’m so glad I stayed with it, however, because this story was exactly what I was looking for. The story centers on the Wicked Witches/Stepmothers from Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Snow White, and looks at the story from the point of view of the stepmothers and how the story may not be as cut and dry as presented. 
While the concept of a story from the point of view of the “villain” is not necessarily a new idea, I thought that this was particularly well done as it shows the ideas that are so normalized within these series that most people never give them a second thought. Not the typically analyzed “damsel in distress” idea, which most people now recognize, but rather the idea that all of these women who were demonized by these stories actually raised these girls from when they were very young, and most of them were just teenagers when they left, and how that might have twisted ideas around. I won’t say anymore about this specifically because I don’t want to spoil the story, but it’s an idea I haven’t seen explored before.
This is a short review, but the story was short as well and I don’t want to give too much away. Ultimately, I think that this story does something that isn’t often done in the realm of fairy-tale retellings. Each of the women in the story has her own to tell, and is definitely worth the read to hear them.