A Wicked Thing by Rhiannon Thomas

Information

Goodreads: A Wicked Thing
Series: A Wicked Thing #1
Source: Library
Published: February 24, 2015

Official Summary

One hundred years after falling asleep, Princess Aurora wakes up to the kiss of a handsome prince and a broken kingdom that has been dreaming of her return. All the books say that she should be living happily ever after. But as Aurora understands all too well, the truth is nothing like the fairy tale.

Her family is long dead. Her “true love” is a kind stranger. And her whole life has been planned out by political foes while she slept.

As Aurora struggles to make sense of her new world, she begins to fear that the curse has left its mark on her, a fiery and dangerous thing that might be as wicked as the witch who once ensnared her. With her wedding day drawing near, Aurora must make the ultimate decision on how to save her kingdom: marry the prince or run.

Review

I was interested in reading A Wicked Thing pre-publication but eventually deferred it because I began seeing some lackluster reviews. However, I’m a huge fan of new takes on fairy tales, and I really enjoyed Thomas’s other book Long May She Reign, so I finally picked this up when I stumbled across it at the library. Overall, I have to agree with many of the reviews I saw that suggest the book is good but not great, but it was fun enough to read I think I’d still be interested in checking out the sequel.

The book starts out pretty slowly, as Aurora has just woken up from her cursed 100 year sleep and must adjust to living in a world where everyone she knows is dead and everything has changed. This might be a turn-off for some readers, I but I actually thought the slow immersion worked for the situation. I was more confused when the book suddenly became fast-paced, but with random events being thrown at the protagonist one after another.  A blurb on the cover talks about the amazing twists and turns; personally, I think there’s a fine line between a “twist” that was foreshadowed and unrelated, unpredictable things just happening in quick succession.

Aurora as a character doesn’t really save the book, either. She’s understandably lost when she first wakes up and no one will really tell her what’s going on in the world; they just want to use her for their own political advantage. However, she doesn’t really grow into her own throughout the book.  I sometimes think the focus on “character driven novels” in YA can get overblown and want to advocate for characters who aren’t overtly “badass, take charge of their own destiny females like Katniss” because there are different ways of being strong.  However, there is admittedly something boring about reading about a character who seems blown along by whatever wind passes and who believes things other people tell her that are obviously lies.

As for the romance, I think it’s best described as a love rectangle, and I’ll leave it at that.

And yet…there were things that were interesting and entertaining about this book. Maybe it’s actually the familiarity of some fantasy tropes, like a princess sneaking out dressed as a peasant to see her people.  Or something about the acknowledgement that simply waking up might not have automatically led to a happily ever after for Aurora. Or just that there was so much going on, even when it seemed arbitrary.  There seems to be a promise of dragons in the sequel, so I’m excited for that.  This isn’t the best book I’ve read in YA fantasy, but it was good enough.