Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige

Amy is just a girl trying to get out of Kansas. One night, a tornado strikes her town and she’s transported to the land of Oz. Sounds familiar, right? Amy finds out that Dorothy (the first tornado-traveling Kanzite) actually returned to Oz and became a tyrant. She’s got Glinda the “good” witch sucking all of the magic out of Oz. After being saved from execution by the Order of the Wicked, Amy is given one option: kill Dorothy.

I seriously love this cover so much. Even before I’d heard all of the hype, I knew just from the cover that I wanted to read it. Alas, I was doomed to be disappointed. Just to be transparent, I brought this book with me to Disneyland. We would hit up the park in the morning and then go back to the hotel around one or two to rest/nap and then head back out around six until the park closed. I tried to start reading Dorothy Must Die during that break time and I had a really hard time staying awake (mostly because of not enough sleep and physical exhaustion). So it took me a REALLY long time to get into the groove of the book. I don’t know if the beginning would have grabbed me in another circumstance, but I felt really underwhelmed by it.

So it didn’t grab me right off the bat and I also felt like the voice and tone of the book was really immature. I didn’t find myself liking the main character. Honestly, I thought she was an idiot. If I land in an ominous world that I’d never been to before and a native tells me not to do something because it’s against the rules, I’M NOT GOING TO DO IT. Her actions just aggravated me so much throughout the entire book. That, and she’s just so selfish. EXTREMELY selfish.

If I don’t like the main character, I can usually just ignore it if the plot is really interesting or if I really like some of the secondary characters. Neither was the case here. The plot was predictable and really slow in parts. The book’s flap promised a kind of quest where Amy would need to go and collect the tin man’s heart, the lion’s courage, etc. But these items aren’t mentioned until literally the last chapter of the book. The idea of Amy having to go on this gruesome scavenger hunt really appealed to me so I was extremely disappointed that it wasn’t a part of the first book. At the same time, I’d resolved about 3/4 through the first book not to finish the series, but now that they’ve finally introduced this portion of the book, I’ll probably have to at least read the next one. And honestly, that kind of ticks me off. It’s like click-bait!

Overall, I felt that this book had so much potential but it really didn’t live up to it. So much hype. Too much hype. Also, one more thing. I still love the cover, but does it bug anyone else that Dorothy’s shoes are white? I mean, we ALL know that they’re supposed to be red. Awkward.

Overall Rating: 2
Violence: Heavy, moderately graphic.
Language: Moderate
Sexual Content: None
Smoking/Drinking: Mild