I ought to have written this much, MUCH sooner, but alas, I'm a chronic procrastinator. I was lucky enough to snag an e-arc of this wonderful book a bit before release and even managed to read it more or less on time (it was a delight! I just happen to be a mess and reading about a dozen books at once).

I tried my best to go into this story as blindly as possible, but the characters were already familiar from some insta posts. (There are some truly lovely graphics that go with the MC profiles, in case you are as bad at imagining faces as I am.) So, fair warning, or alternately, good news! This book is NOT A STANDALONE. I was convinced it was, until the last couple pages. (Yeah that's on me, really should have looked.)

The Grimrose Girls is not exactly a retelling. Yes, the main characters reference famous fairy tale princesses (and occasionally I had trouble separating Nani's image from her Disney name sake, even though they have almost nothing to do with each other), and we have a serious ensemble cast of supporting characters from other genres, but this story is more meta than that. Slowly, they each start to see the resemblance and that opens up a lot of possibilities. (Plus, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the "foregone conclusions" took a sharp left turn. I'm looking at you, Yuki.)

I loved that for the first 3 quarters of the book I couldn't tell if I was reading a thriller with a serial killer/cult that got their inspiration from reading a story book, or if there was real magic going on in the background. (Now I know, but I'm still wondering if perhaps there's some intersectionality.) Book 1 builds up several mysteries and budding relationships, and leaves a lot of questions unanswered, thank god. There's a lot to look forward to in the next installment, so much so that I'm gonna be sitting here drumming my fingers until November.