Once Upon a Dream-A Twisted Tale

This book is absolutely delightful but if you thought Maleficent was scary before this version of her will remind you why she is often times thought of as one of the baddest of the Disney baddies.
In this twisted tale, when Prince Philip gets to the Princess and gives her that almighty kiss that will wake her from her slumber... he falls asleep too. Now he just might be adrift in Aurora's dream land but it might not be clear to the princess that she's even dreaming. Yet. She stumbles upon something rather disturbing and realizes something strange is taking place. From there, the story really takes off.
I'll leave it there so I don't spoil anything and if you want more there are probably other reviews with more detail since there are so many there already!
This is a good book and a great edition to the Twisted Tales collection. If you like those or are a Disney fan, you should give this one a try.

This book is ridiculously bad. It seemed okay at first, but as soon as Aurora meets the prince, it becomes unbearable. Their relationship is awkward in a terrible way. If you’re not an avid reader, you may enjoy this book, otherwise I would pick up something else. The language seems like it’s meant for 3rd graders and the adjectives are ad-libbed in just to have an extra word. I did want to pick up the other Disney stories, but they have fallen to the very bottom of my next-to-read list.

I want to start out by saying that I did not enjoy this book at all. I thoroughly enjoyed Part of Your World, but I did not get nearly the same amount of satisfaction from Once Upon a Dream. The excitement that the former created for the Twisted Tale series was sadly destroyed by this book.

The book to me felt like an unnecessarily long journey and many parts of it felt like filler, with the sole intent of making the story longer. There were a few parallel stories, and I struggled to find interest in most of what was going on. The entirety of the book felt disjointed and very bland.

I would not recommend this book unless you are dead set on reading every Twisted Tale.

An interesting concept, but the story is slow to get going. The writing is mediocre and an excessive amount of time is spent describing the same things over and over. The last 100 pages were probably the best. The book could have benefited from a strong editor. Not inspired to read anything else by the author.

Liz's "As Old As Time" is the best out of all of them. "Once Upon A Dream" is better than "A Whole New World" but it's still not super great. I got bored really easily. It was a nice concept but it just took too long to get to the point.

I wish I could give two ratings. I will start off by saying I am a big fan of Sleeping Beauty the original fairytale, the Tchaikovsky ballet, and the Disney film. Maleficent is a train wreck of a film targeted at pseudo-feminists and Disney addicts with open wallets.

However, based on the description on the back of this book, I thought I was in for what sounded like a decent fanfic by comparison. It was unfortunately just another ploy to get money from superficial readers. One star for the actual quality of the novel. It is a terrible read. It's worse than Twilight only because it's in third person, and the author doesn't understand the difference between third-person limited and omniscient, let alone third person versus first person. If not for that, it would be on a par with Twilight. That is not a compliment.

That being said, there is a thing called hate-reading, or "so bad, it's good." Read the author's description of herself in the back. It is hilarious, and sounds completely fabircated. 5 stars for pure, solid gold, horse puckey writing. Liz Braswell, you have filled my life with artificial sunshine, and have made my eyes roll out of my head multiple times with all the little shoddily inserted Disney Easter eggs in this book for the true fan. Example: Aurora saying "Oh, bother." And some aren't even Disney, like "You have no power. Be gone. " Because Disney REALLY, REALLY wants the rights to the Wizard of Oz and can't have them due to copyright law.

I am a huge Sleeping Beauty fan and I loved this book. It is a beautiful reimagining of the story. The characters of both Princess Aurora and Prince Phillip are well developed and there are great themes about female empowerment, self discovery, empathy, overcoming depression and what loving someone really means. I can't wait to read the other books in the series. If you enjoyed Meleficent or Wicked, or Tangled, I think you will enjoy this book.

"As Old As Time" was the book I started with and it was amazing. This one was a huge let down. There were some cool parts... but for the most part it was slow and not cohesive. The main character has SPOILER ALERT SORT OF been dumbed down by the antagonist and while I get why, following a really stupid protagonist is really hard to do. I had a hard time caring about her. Then later in the book it jumps between what is going on or where they even are, which again, I get, because they are in a dream. But it's not pulled off very well and is disorienting.

Get " As Old As Time" instead. Or the Aladdin one is pretty good too.

The book is amazing so far. I love it I really do but it’s so fragile. I’ve read a lot of paperback books but this is less durable than I’m used to. It didn’t get here with those marks on the spine, that’s from me opening it for the first time. Definitely buy the book if you’re considering and love Disney just be aware and be careful.