Lies of Golden Straw
Well then. That only took 2 library renewals (with a few weeks wait in between because borrowing ebooks is like that) and a lot of sighs and eye rolls to get through. At least with this one, the not-in-the-least-bit-subtle foreshadowing was less. Only slightly less, but still an improvement. The bigger problem this time is the insipid, naive main character - Girl/Daughter/Millie/Emalyn or whatever she's going by this week. PICK. A. NAME. (rant: this author seems to love naming characters what she thinks are romantic, fairy tale-esque exceptionally purple sobriquets. After 2 books of this, it's bordering on overindulgent).
In the beginning, I liked Merlin and Millie's friendship. Even if I didn't like all the blinking neon signs that Merlin is supposed to be THE Merlin (stop trying to squash fairy tales and legends together. They are different.), at least this sole friendship was decent basis for story and gave a way to fill time pre-straw to gold tasks. I liked Merlin so of course he was banished from the story for a good number of pages. When he returned, Millie was already fully into her my normal life sucks so I want to be princess state and therefore became the unrequited love portion of the story. I also liked Kirkin, the guard, even if he seemed like the unknown twin brother of Matteus from End of Ever After. Liking those two as much as I did, left me rather disappointed with Rainn. He was vague and flat as Millie's love interest. Of course by that time, I was becoming bored with Millie, herself. She had no purpose, no life, aside from fretting about an imp and missing her bestest friend in the world (and then stomping on his heart). So really her and Rainn were probably perfect for each other - both being able to fade into the background. Fading into the background is the best way to describe the ending. Once the big what's my name mystery was solved and Merlin finally decided he deserved more and left, the story fizzled on for too many pages. A quick couple of paragraphs epilogue could easily have filled in for those last 30 pages that I think were only there to link this book to the first one.
Side note: I narrowed my eyes at the whole name the children Jacob and Wilhelm thing (apparently someone is unaware that the Grimm brother's name was Jakob with a K. He was German after all). I guess when you're already squeezing more than 3 fairy tales into one book, there's more than enough room to include the men who actually collected some of those original tales.
As much as I love a fairy tale retelling, I had told myself I was done with this series with this book. And then I saw that the preview is for her version of The Little Mermaid. Sigh. That particular story has always fascinated me because people never seem to actually know how Hans Christian Andersen actually ended it. But now? I kinda what to see how Disney-fied PLUS (she even used the Disney name) Tenenbaum's version is.