Tinder in The Under-Hyped Readathon!

Apr 09, 2014 Jean Menzies rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, horror

This story is inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale Tinderbox and whether familiar with the tale or not the inspiration is evident to the reader in the creation by Gardner of a lengthy and magical fairytale-esque story. If you think of a traditional fairytale, unnerving and often gruesome then you can speculate the experience of reading an elongated version of such a story; this is what you will get when you read Tinder. This is definitely for fans of the eery fantastical folktale. And ...more

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Jul 03, 2013 Katie (Kitkatscanread) rated it really liked it

This book was so good!!
I really like stories that are told like a fairy tale or a fable.
Reminds me of when I was a child.
Tinder is based on the story The Tinderbox by Hans Christian Anderson.
I was just enchanted and enjoyed every moment.
Definitely recommend.

Full review to come...

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Nov 18, 2014 Brianna rated it it was ok

Shelves: young-adult, 2013-release-date, cover-love, retellings, read-in-2015, black-white-and-red

Sometimes, looks are deceiving.

The synopsis of this book is so very vague, and the photos make it look like a haunting mystery and adventure. That not what this is. It's a love chase. The story surrounds a man named Otto, who meets a girl in the forest, falls in love with her at first sight, and they have a relationship not 10 pages later. Then she disappears, and he takes it upon himself to find her. Um.... Dude... You just met her. Please now.

One of the main aspects of this book is the photo Sometimes, looks are deceiving.

The synopsis of this book is so very vague, and the photos make it look like a haunting mystery and adventure. That not what this is. It's a love chase. The story surrounds a man named Otto, who meets a girl in the forest, falls in love with her at first sight, and they have a relationship not 10 pages later. Then she disappears, and he takes it upon himself to find her. Um.... Dude... You just met her. Please now.

One of the main aspects of this book is the photographs - I was mainly interested in this book because of them!! Heck, I'm such a sucker for black and red colour schemes. So ominous and bloody awesome (puns are great XD). As I read this, it was one of the only aspects that didn't disappoint me to any extent. They were beautiful, and really enhanced the story!! They helped me capture some great imagery that I loved loved loved !! Another fantastic aspect was the dreams. They were scattered about the novel (white text in a black cloud) and up-scaled the creepiness level. It was really cool, and actually got me re-inspired to continue writing a story that involves dreams as well.

Other than that, there were a lot of things that bothered me... For one thing there was some MEGA instalove. As I mentioned before, Otto met Safire, fell in love with her at the sight, and then made out but 9 pages later... 9 pages... Just let that sink in for a moment. 9 pages is about 5 minutes of storyline. 5 minutes is the time it takes to read this book review. Now imagine knowing someone for that amount of time, and then staying in a cave with them. Not a likely story, huh?! I'd go as far to say that would never happen . Ever.

That being said, Tinder is based upon the fairytale of Tinderbox (which I have not yet read), and in fairytales, there often isn't too much character development, and not and incredible amount of relationship building. In that way, Gardner nailed it! The writing style and time period fit the fairytale-esque feel that the author was obviously going for, and I loved that. In fact, it's why the rating is 3 stars instead of 2. On that note, perhaps I was expecting more of a Cinder-type fairytale retelling, and that's why this novel fell short for me. I don't know.

Sort of going along with the above, I wasn't able to relate to the characters so much in this one. They were often there for no more than a chapter or two, were totally flat, or had motives that I didn't entirely agree with *cough* Otto *cough*. Instead, I was reading about characters that I didn't care about, which was totally frustrating!! This is another place where the pictures come in - they helped me like/dislike the characters more (depending on whether or not I was supposed to or not), which is always a good thing when reading a book.

Tinder is not bad, just different than what I expected! I went in blind towards the plot and the theme, hyping myself up too much due to the drawings and cover. If these things weren't a factor, and I went in like you will now be, this one could have easily been 4 or 5 stars. I definitely recommend this one to any fans of old-folk fairytales, beautiful images, and a quick read that you're destined to fly by.

PS: The ending... Wow okay, so twisted and dark and lovely <3

UPDATE: an almost book later... I was trying to decide between 2/2.5/3 stars for this one, and made my choice to be generous, thinking that maybe I was being too hard on my book ratings (having rating things lower than usual lately). Then I picked up a different beautiful book and realized that my marking tactics are fine. I just need to let it gooooo. So, I'm sorry Tinder, but you are getting D. E. M. O. T. E. D. (I hope that wasn't offensive... Everything that I mentioned in my review still stands – both the good, and the bad.) ...more

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