Mell Eight

Nine tales of magic, love, and a little fairy dust: A military posting at the Rapunzel Tower to avoid war in The Tower; a Brownie that just wants to do something right in Cleanly Wrong; a dream of love unfulfilled in A Heart’s Dream; saving the victims of an evil witch in The Red Apple Witch; a boy who just wants to go to the ball in Cinder-Elle; a cursed kingdom and search for lost love in The Curse; a thief and his fairy godparent with different ideas about love in Happily Ever After; a lightning strike, a lost egg, an ancient battle, and love at first spark in Thunderbird; and a prince trapped, knowing his true love will never save him in The Beast.

A Little Fairy Dust

This is a collection of mlm fairy tale retellings that add an interesting twist to well-known tales. I enjoyed seeing so many of the stories tie together, either with couples from earlier stories showing up in later ones or with multiple fairy tales contributing to a single story. It really makes you think about how each fairy tale is being used. The majority of this book is a very solid 4 stars for me, but the last two stories felt iffy. The penultimate story is called "Thunderbird" and it's based on "Native American folklore" - as if all Native Nations had the same folklore and traditions and the Thunderbird is common to all of them. I personally don't know enough about the Thunderbird to be able to speak to how well it's handled but the fact that Eight doesn't specify which tradition it came from just gives me a little pause. And then the last story, "The Beast" was just straight up ableist. It's based off of Beauty and the Beast and the Beast's curse is not to turn into an animal hybrid, as is usually seen, but instead to make him disabled. He's scarred and has limited mobility, and in chronic pain. And his scars and physical deformities make him totally unlovable. And of course, when the curse breaks, he's young and healthy and beautiful again! I just don't have the patience for such blatant ableism so the whole collection ended on a really sour note for me, which kinda bumped the star rating down, which is super unfortunate.

I loved the idea of reimagined fairytales with an lgbtq twist. The cover is pretty, the premise is promising, but I was overall a bit disappointed. I enjoyed the writing style, but for the length of each of the stories there was way too much focus on world-building and not enough on the stories themselves. 

I would’ve loved to see one or two of these more developed or woven together, rather than so many short stories that felt a bit rushed and so separate. The tower was by far my favorite, if she ever chooses to expand on that one I would love to come back and read it! 

Thank you to Mell Eight, NetGalley, and NineStar Press for sending me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Southern Today Gone Tomorrow

Written by Mell Eight, A Little Fairy Dust is a collection of short stories inspired by classic fairy tales.

This book was a fun read, with well-written characters, but I wanted to like it a lot more than I did. The biggest thing for me was that the start of the stories never really felt like they delivered, and for once the romances were really not what I wanted to read about.

I wanted to read about everything else, not how distracting an attractive person can be.

I did appreciate the fact that this book took a different approach to romance - and no, I'm not talking about the fact that they are LGBTQ relationships - but that they were subtle and I didn't always expect them. But they still weren't the interesting part that I wanted to know more about.

If you are looking for a collection of sweat LGBTQ fairy love tales, this could be a good choice for you.

I did receive a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A Little Fairy Dust

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