Adam Gidwitz, the author of A Tale Dark and Grimm, has managed to make me think "Hmmm, that is quite original." I have a difficult time with books sometimes, I have read enough in both YA and adult to see similarities everywhere. This cynically makes me wonder if there are any new ideas left out there or will all the books I read from now on be imitations of each other? So reading this novel made me happy because while it is clearly a take-off on the Grimm brothers' fairy tales, it did so in a clever way.
The main characters are Hansel and Gretel. They live their own tale, but also become significant in some of the Grimms' lesser know stories like "The Seven Swallows" and "The Three Golden Hairs." I like how Gidwitz wove the stories together so we got the essence of the originals with Hansel and/or Gretel as the protagonists. Really well done.
The part of the novel that seemed familiar to me was the narrator addressing the reader, which reminded me a bit of the same device used by Lemony Snicket. This is not a criticism, just a familiarity I felt.
