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Look for Sarah Cross's
brand-new fairy tale-inspired novel
TEAR YOU APART
coming from Egmont USATEAR YOU APART
in 2015!
Check out my reviews of
KILL ME SOFTLY
and
AFTER THE BALL
(Which you can read online right now for free!),
as well as an awesome guest post from last year's FTF as Sarah Cross discusses
"The Fairy Tale Princess You Don't Want to Be."
If you want to know more about her, read one of her books. Her soul is in there somewhere.
Current art inspirations & obsessions can be found at tumblr, Fairy Tale Mood, or pinterest.
White as Snow, Red as Blood,
Perfect for a Retelling
by Sarah Cross
Snow White is a fairy tale I never get tired of―probably because I first encountered it as a Disney movie, and so my belated discovery of the Grimms' tale made it seem that much more twisted in comparison. “Someday my prince will come” and the rosy-cheeked doll princess of 1937 collide with a tale of envy, suffocation and beautiful corpses. I love that there's no true love's kiss in the Grimms' Snow White. The prince simply sees Snow White while she's in her glass coffin, decides he has to have her, and offers to buy her from the seven dwarves. They refuse at first, but when the prince claims he can't live without the dead girl, the dwarves relent and give him the coffin. As for how Snow White revives: in one version (Grimms, 1812), the prince's servants are so sick of carrying the glass coffin everywhere that one of them smacks the corpse's back in frustration and the chunk of poison apple comes flying out. In another version (Grimms, 1819), the prince's servants are carrying the glass coffin when one of them trips and the jolt jars the piece of apple from Snow White's throat. That's what saves her. Not a kiss: an accident.
Then you have the magic mirror, and the queen's desperate need for its approval. You have the huntsman, the reluctant killer who lets Snow White escape into the woods not because he thinks killing her is wrong, but because he can't bear to do the deed himself and assumes wild animals will eat her before she gets very far. We have a girl who runs away, tries to hide and be safe, and finds herself trapped at every turn. Even after she's survived her stepmother's murder attempts and is freed from her glass coffin, she's locked into a marriage with a prince who fell in love with her not as a person, but as a collectible.
I'm interested in relationships, and Snow White has some of the most messed-up relationships around. How could I not write about it?
TEAR YOU APART, my forthcoming Snow White retelling (January 2015 from Egmont), is set in the same place as my first fairy tale novel, KILL ME SOFTLY: in Beau Rivage, a city where people are cursed to live out fairy tales. Every Cursed has choices to make, but destiny is a powerful, almost overwhelming force. Viv, my cursed Snow White, believes in fate, but doesn't think she's destined for a happy ending. Too many things have gone wrong in her life, and she's lost any hopeful innocence she might have had. Her stepmother, once a loving parent and friend, has fully embraced her role as the Evil Queen and spends her days messing with Viv's head and sowing seeds of doubt, while bringing them closer to the curse's fated conclusion―which will leave one of them dead.
Henley, Viv's childhood best friend turned boyfriend, used to be the one person she could rely on, no matter what. But a little over a year ago, a fairy cursed Henley to be Snow White's Huntsman―and that trust was broken. Now Henley's role in the curse is to spare Viv's life or kill her and cut out her heart, and she doesn't know which choice he'll make. She knows he doesn't want to lose her. If he spares her, she's destined to marry a prince and leave Henley behind. But if he kills her, he can keep her heart forever.
Viv knows the end is coming and there's no way to escape her fate. But then she receives an invitation to the exclusive underworld nightclub where the Twelve Dancing Princesses go to dance. There she meets Jasper, one of the twelve princes of the underworld. Only Jasper isn't like his brothers; he's not partnered with one of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, he's a Snow White prince. And he doesn't want to wait for the curse to run its course―he wants to save Viv now. He invites her to join him in the underworld, where she'll be safe from her stepmother, and the Huntsman will never touch her again.
Safety is so tempting . . . Viv doesn't want to choke on a poison apple or end up with her heart stored in a velvet-lined box. She knows she and Henley don't have a future―but is she ready to give up her first love and not look back? Jasper is supposed to be her happy ending, but she barely knows him. Can she trust him? Given the events of the fairy tale, is happily-ever-after even possible for a Snow White princess?
That's the basic set up for TEAR YOU APART. It's Beau Rivage, of course, so Snow White and the Twelve Dancing Princesses aren't the only fairy tale curses you'll encounter. The city is full of people blending modern lives with age-old stories, dreaming of happily-ever-afters and fearing that happy endings are for other people, not them. TEAR YOU APART takes one of my favorite questions―what if your life was like a fairy tale?―and answers it in just one of many possible ways. The beauty of fairy tale retellings is that we can keep answering that question and always bring something new to the table.
If you want to read about the cursed fairy tale characters of Beau Rivage before January 2015, you can check out KILL ME SOFTLY or my Cinderella story After the Ball. But you don't have to have read either of those to read TEAR YOU APART. The main difference, aside from the fairy tales retold and the main characters, is that KILL ME SOFTLY is a newcomer's account of Beau Rivage, while in TEAR YOU APART, you get an insider's view. I hope you'll visit, regardless of where you decide to start.
Then you have the magic mirror, and the queen's desperate need for its approval. You have the huntsman, the reluctant killer who lets Snow White escape into the woods not because he thinks killing her is wrong, but because he can't bear to do the deed himself and assumes wild animals will eat her before she gets very far. We have a girl who runs away, tries to hide and be safe, and finds herself trapped at every turn. Even after she's survived her stepmother's murder attempts and is freed from her glass coffin, she's locked into a marriage with a prince who fell in love with her not as a person, but as a collectible.
I'm interested in relationships, and Snow White has some of the most messed-up relationships around. How could I not write about it?
TEAR YOU APART, my forthcoming Snow White retelling (January 2015 from Egmont), is set in the same place as my first fairy tale novel, KILL ME SOFTLY: in Beau Rivage, a city where people are cursed to live out fairy tales. Every Cursed has choices to make, but destiny is a powerful, almost overwhelming force. Viv, my cursed Snow White, believes in fate, but doesn't think she's destined for a happy ending. Too many things have gone wrong in her life, and she's lost any hopeful innocence she might have had. Her stepmother, once a loving parent and friend, has fully embraced her role as the Evil Queen and spends her days messing with Viv's head and sowing seeds of doubt, while bringing them closer to the curse's fated conclusion―which will leave one of them dead.
Henley, Viv's childhood best friend turned boyfriend, used to be the one person she could rely on, no matter what. But a little over a year ago, a fairy cursed Henley to be Snow White's Huntsman―and that trust was broken. Now Henley's role in the curse is to spare Viv's life or kill her and cut out her heart, and she doesn't know which choice he'll make. She knows he doesn't want to lose her. If he spares her, she's destined to marry a prince and leave Henley behind. But if he kills her, he can keep her heart forever.
Viv knows the end is coming and there's no way to escape her fate. But then she receives an invitation to the exclusive underworld nightclub where the Twelve Dancing Princesses go to dance. There she meets Jasper, one of the twelve princes of the underworld. Only Jasper isn't like his brothers; he's not partnered with one of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, he's a Snow White prince. And he doesn't want to wait for the curse to run its course―he wants to save Viv now. He invites her to join him in the underworld, where she'll be safe from her stepmother, and the Huntsman will never touch her again.
Safety is so tempting . . . Viv doesn't want to choke on a poison apple or end up with her heart stored in a velvet-lined box. She knows she and Henley don't have a future―but is she ready to give up her first love and not look back? Jasper is supposed to be her happy ending, but she barely knows him. Can she trust him? Given the events of the fairy tale, is happily-ever-after even possible for a Snow White princess?
That's the basic set up for TEAR YOU APART. It's Beau Rivage, of course, so Snow White and the Twelve Dancing Princesses aren't the only fairy tale curses you'll encounter. The city is full of people blending modern lives with age-old stories, dreaming of happily-ever-afters and fearing that happy endings are for other people, not them. TEAR YOU APART takes one of my favorite questions―what if your life was like a fairy tale?―and answers it in just one of many possible ways. The beauty of fairy tale retellings is that we can keep answering that question and always bring something new to the table.
If you want to read about the cursed fairy tale characters of Beau Rivage before January 2015, you can check out KILL ME SOFTLY or my Cinderella story After the Ball. But you don't have to have read either of those to read TEAR YOU APART. The main difference, aside from the fairy tales retold and the main characters, is that KILL ME SOFTLY is a newcomer's account of Beau Rivage, while in TEAR YOU APART, you get an insider's view. I hope you'll visit, regardless of where you decide to start.
~*~
O F F I C I A L I N F O:
Title: KILL ME SOFTLY
Author: Sarah Cross
Release Date: April 10, 2012
Publisher: Egmont USA
SUMMARY:
Title: TEAR YOU APART
Author: Sarah Cross
Release Date: January 2015
Publisher: Egmont USA
SUMMARY:
Pitched as a modern Snow White reimagining, in which a teen with a murderous stepmother is trapped in a dangerous game of love, jealously, and hate with her best friend and lover, who is destined to decide if she lives or dies...until a mysterious prince from a strange Underworld offers her an escape.
Hyperventilating over here. A new book! About Viv! Omg so excited. JANUARY 2015!?!? I loved Kill Me Softly and After the Ball. Ok breathe...breathe. This is going to be spectacular, an insider's view of Beau Rivage is something I have been wairing on...well and a new book.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read anything by this author yet, but I'm kind of hesitant about Snow White retellings. I do have to admit that I did like the Grimm version better than the Disney version. After reading this post I think I'm going to read this book as soon as possible.
ReplyDeleteThis looks and sounds really good. Very intense!
ReplyDelete