A Spindle Splintered (Fractured Fables #1)

by Alix E. Harrow

I’m aware that Sleeping Beauty’s name has ranged from Talia to Aurora to Zellandine (do not Google that last one), but the Grimms called her Briar Rose and my name is Zinnia Gray, so just let me have this one, alright?).

Dying girl rule #3 is no romance, because my entire life is one long trolley problem and I don’t want to put any more bodies on the tracks. (I’ve spent enough time in therapy to know that this isn’t “a healthy attitude toward attachment,” but I personally feel that accepting my own imminent mortality is enough work without also having a healthy attitude about it.)

I wish briefly but passionately that I’d been zapped into a different storyline, maybe one of those ’90s girl power fairy tale retellings with a rebellious princess who wears trousers and hates sewing. (I know they promoted a reductive vision of women’s agency that privileged traditionally male-coded forms of power, but let’s not pretend girls with swords don’t get shit done.)

Maybe the universe doesn’t naturally bend toward justice either; maybe it’s only the weight of hands and hearts pulling it true, inch by stubborn inch.