Snow: A blog tour post!

To celebrate the release of Snow by Gina Inverarity, here's my blog tour stop for the #AusYABloggers tour (more stops here)!

Here's a brief synopsis:

When the girl brought my bowl she was in and out through the door like she couldn’t move fast enough. And when the lock clicked after her I found something she’d left. A knife. And not one for spreading butter, but a sharp one for slitting throats.

Locked in a cell by her stepmother, Snow grows small but she still grows. Even so, she’s hardly a match for a world gone wild, where the sun has disappeared behind clouds for good. The night the hunter takes her into the forest with orders to cut out her heart, Snow makes him a promise she isn’t sure she can keep. And then she runs.

Snow’s life is no fairytale. As she grows up her path will take her into the mountains, over misty passes, desolate gorges and alpine rivers, as well as to the city, where she will make her case for the return of what is hers.

And her childish promise will not be forgotten.

A dark and lyrical Snow White retelling set in a postclimate-change world, Snow is a fairytale of the future.

My review:

As soon as I started reading, I was instantly mesmerised by the world, and how Snow has to face difficult times, growing up with a bitter step-grandmother.

I felt that Snow's speech pattern was written really well in the book, and made for a unique voice that still remains in my head! Snow truly presents herself as a larger-than-life character that powers through all that has happened to her, no matter if it is life-or-death or just a minor thing. I also loved how she developed as a character throughout the book, forming connections with not only the bear (which was super cute to read about, but also bittersweet), but the people who have been sent by her stepmother that try to hurt her.

The world itself is portrayed as bleak. This bleak feeling set the tone for the book and the events that conspire within Zealand, which is a post-climate change New Zealand. The descriptiveness of the world and what the wild is made me shiver to read about, as I didn't know what would conspire whilst reading each page. I also feel like the bleakness of the setting could truly be a warning for us in the present day, and a look into what the future could look like.

Overall, I adored this dark retelling of Snow White, and now I really wish I had a bear of my own too! 

My rating for this book is 4/5

About the author:

Gina Inverarity worked for many years as an editor for a range of publishers. Her first children’s book, The Brown Dog, was published in 2017. Gina owns a forest in New Zealand and hopes to live in it one day. For now, she lives in Wellington with her partner and two daughters. Snow is her first young adult novel.

Links to check out:
Wakefield Press Site | Goodreads | Website | Instagram