Fairy Tale Gone Wrong: Kill Me Softly

Kill Me Softly
by Sarah Cross
Egmont
2012
331 pages

read an excerpt here

Inspired storytelling, breathless and passionate, but evil and dark, terrors and shadows, whispered voices, monsters who lurk in the dark, this ya novel has it all. Take one part Brothers Grimm, add two parts dark romance, and a shake of an unhappy ending, and you have Mirabelle's life.

Just before her sixteenth birthday, Mirabelle invents a secret boyfriend in San Francisco and leaves "clues" that she's headed there to meet him. That is not where she's headed at all; Mirabelle is returning to her birthplace: Beau Rivage--a shadowy and tragic place where her parents died in a fire and her godmothers have refused to talk about. That's just too many secrets for Mirabelle. She wants to visit her parents' graves and find answers for herself.

Beau Rivage is a wicked town where fairy tales meet monsters. Two brothers--one good, one strange and dark--pull at Mira's heartstrings. She's warned to stay away from "good" Felix, but he's so charming--inviting her to stay in his lavish hotel suite, waiting on her every whim, wining and dining her, and offering to help her find her parents' graves. How could someone so charming be dangerous? And how could someone so rude and crude like bad boy Blue be the "nice" brother?

Mira visits a few cemetaries and comes up empty. It's like her parents never existed. Then, Mira meets some local friends of Blue's and realizes that no one is who they seem in Beau Rivage. Each person has a curse, a jinx, a fairy tale to live up to; they are what is known as "honor bound."

Freddie is "honor bound" to be Mira's true love, but she is crushing on Felix. She learns that Blue and Felix are Romantics --those destined to love by feeding off the lifeforce of their beloved until she dies. Mira finds herself sickened and hurries back to the hotel to see what Felix keeps hidden in the locked room she was told to stay out of at all costs (why does the heroine always have to look behind the locked door?)

Sometimes fairy tales come true; sometimes fairy tales are fractured; sometimes fairy tales are inspired; but this time, this fairy tale rocks! Girls who love a fairy tale romance with a handsome hunk and a clever, spunky heroine will fall in love with Kill Me Softly. Blue will have girls swooning and clamoring for more, more, more!

Highly, highly recommended grades 9-up. Mature situations, Mira sleeps in Felix's hotel room, Felix kills young, beautiful women, some morbid situations.

FTC Required Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. I did not receive monetary compensation for this review.