The Shadow Queen/C.J. Redwine - 3 stars

[JoLene]

This is the story of Princess Lorelai, who has been in hiding for the last eight years since her Aunt and step-mother, Queen Irina killed her father in order to become sole ruler of Ravenspire. Lorelai has been laying in wait, preparing to take back the throne. In a neighboring kingdom, Prince Kol, a dragon-shifter is unexpectantly thrust into the spotlight when whole family is killed by ogres that invade their lands. He goes to Ravenspire to make a deal with Queen Irina, a powerful madrushka (magician), to get rid of the ogres, but Irina wants Kol to hunt down Lorelai in exchange.

I'm struggling a bit with how to rate this book. It is a Snow-white retelling without the dwarves -- many would say dragon shape-shifters are better than dwarves, but I sort of missed them. Lorelai was a spunky heroine, but a bit smug at times. Queen Irina was very power hungry but a bit one-dimensional in that all she wanted was power and felt cheated out of her birthright so she killed her sister and then took her place. I thought there were some nice touches regarding the relationship between Lorelai and Kol and I love Sasha the gwerfalcon (probably spelled that wrong since I listened to the audio). I might be getting burnt out on the fairy-tale retellings or on YA fantasy in general, but while I enjoyed this, it was of the same quality as the Lunar Chronicles which I've also been reading recently.