Abandoned by Booklikes

Long review short. This is book two in the Dorothy Must Die series by Danielle Paige. You can read my review of book one, here. I gave book one three stars too, so I am going to have to think hard for continuing on with this series after this. I initially said if book two didn't grab me I wasn't going to continue. There are so many books out there, it's not worth it to keep plugging along at a series that does not engage you anymore.

I had to give up on James Patterson's Women's Murder Club, Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake, and threw in the towel this year on J.D. Robb's In Death series.

This book essentially is just book one all over again we very little forward momentum. We have Amy still going around lamenting her past while also becoming a super powered dark Mary Sue. I wish I was kidding about that last part.

There are spoilers for book one in this review, so please skip if you have not read book one yet.

We ended book one with Amy fleeing the Emerald Palace with Princess Ozma after trying to kill Dorothy and failing. We also had the surprise of finding out that Pete, the boy who randomly appeared and tried to help out Amy, was also Princess Ozma. For any fans of the Oz series I clued into that one right away since I had read the previous books and I was ready for Ms. Paige to show her hand on that one.

The Wizard dispatches Amy to remove the Tin Woodman’s heart, steal the Scarecrow’s brain, take the Lion’s courage, and then she will be able to kill Dorothy.

Now I for one would have not trusted a thing that the Wizard said since hey just like in L. Frank Baum's books, we find out the guy is out for himself, and he bears responsibility of things that occurred because he sold Princess Ozma to one of the wicked witches in order to rule Oz. Apparently Amy doesn't have great critical thinking skills and decides to do what the Wizard wants while trying to find others from the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked, specifically Nox.

As I said above, Amy with no training or anyone to guide her is suddenly able to tap into dark magic and becomes a jumped up Dark Mary Sue. Instead of getting any character growth for Amy, we just have her becoming a more efficient fighter/witch. We don't get a chance to explore any other characters since this book is written in the first person, and we only get to hear Amy's musings about other people, things, events, etc. The main character is a teenager so there is not a lot of depth being displayed while she keeps internally monologuing.

Besides the Dark Mary Sue stuff, this book drags a lot. I don't usually mind first person POV books, but this one definitely shows why many people don't like them. There was way too much tell going on throughout this entire book. Paraphrasing here, say if if Amy was angry, Ms. Paige would then write it by saying that Amy was saying to herself I am angry right now and can feel myself getting angry and readied myself to throw magic at the Lion. The whole book started to get bogged down and got really repetitive throughout.

There was an interesting wrinkle in this book that one wonders how Ms. Paige will resolve it in the final book. She also does include more details about Oz in this book, and those familiar with L. Frank Baum's Oz books will love the re-tellings of characters like Bright and Polychrome.