BOOK REVIEW: Dorothy Must Die – by Danielle Paige

Title: Dorothy Must Die
(Dorothy Must Die #1)
Author: Danielle Paige
Genre: YA, Fantasy, Retelling
First published: April 1st 2014
Finished reading: April 30th 2015
Pages: 453

“I hate to break it to you, but just because someone has pretty hair and a good skin tone and a crown instead of a pointy hat doesn’t mean she’s not the baddest bitch this side of the emerald city.”

Dorothy Must Die has been on my TBR list ever since it came out last year, but somehow I’ve only gotten myself a copy just recently. This novel by Danielle Paige was a great read in general, although I have to admit I was a quite disappointed by the lack of actual fighting against Dorothy and her close friends the Lion, Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow. The main character Amy is supposed to have the mission to remove the Tin Woodman’s heart, steal the Scarecrow’s brain, take the Lion’s courage and then finally kill Dorothy. Still, in Dorothy Must Die, nothing remotely related to that starts happening until the very end. And that left me feeling like I was cheated on. Sure, it’s a great way to ensure people will buy the sequel, but still… I already have a copy of The Wicked Will Rise waiting on shelf though, so I guess it did work. The prose, characters and general setting made me forget about the false promises and I will be looking forward to see if Amy this time does start working on her tasks. If not, I’m not sure I will actually read the third book…

Amy Gumm doesn’t have an easy life back in Kansas living in a trailer and a drunk mother to deal with. She often thinks about wanting to escape, but wasn’t expecting a tornado to do the job. Amy is taken to Oz, and it’s not the place she knows from the movies and books. Everything seems twisted; the good witches have turned bad, while the wicked ones might actually turn out to be the bad guys… What happened? Dorothy happened.

Dorothy found a way to come back to Oz and she has taken over. Now power and magic hungry, she rules Oz as a dictator and the Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Woodman are her cruel helpers. Magic is slowly disappearing from the rest of Oz, harvested by Dorothy to fuel her desires for power. The Wicked have started a rebellion and asked Amy for her help. In order to save Oz, Dorothy must die.

Dorothy Must Die is definitely an entertaining story with great worldbuilding and a prose and pace that makes you want to keep on reading. I liked the changes to the original Wizard Of Oz story that Danielle Paige made, but I wished she hadn’t made false promises about Amy’s mission in the story. It left me almost disappointed at the end of this first book, and I wasn’t able to give the full rating I would have given it otherwise. Still, this novel is highly entertaining and I loved the prose, so I will definitely recommend it to YA fantasy fans. Just prepare yourself for a slow journey where Amy doesn’t work as much on her mission as you would have guessed from the back cover…