A Spindle Splintered by Alix Harrow

 

Not every fairy tale is as magical as it seems in the telling.  That's a lesson Zinnia Gray discovers.  Zinnia was involved in an environmental disaster that means she is living under the promise of an early death.  In fact, no one with her condition has lived past twenty-one.  Once Zinnia was old enough to understand her fate, she fell in love with the story of Sleeping Beauty.  If only she could sleep for a hundred years while someone found the answer to her medical issues.

Her best friend Charm throws Zinnia a party on her birthday in a tower decorated with rose petals and a spinning wheel just like in the fairy tales.  But when Zinnia pricks her finger on the spindle for a joke, she finds herself transported to another land where Princess Primrose is about to undergo a hundred year sleep although she wants no part of a Prince Charming coming to wake her with a kiss.  Even worse, in older and darker versions of the tale, the prince does more than kiss the woman who has no ability to consent and that is Princess Primrose's greatest fear.

Together, Zinnia and Primrose are determined to do whatever it takes to disrupt the fairy tales and the medical prognoses and find a way to live the life they want, not the one that is granted to them regardless of their personal desires.  Readers will be fascinated with this feminist retelling of how society hems in young women and forces them into shapes and lives they never asked for.  This book is recommended for fantasy readers.