Entwined by Heather Dixon

Heather Dixon is a Utah author.  I heard her speak last year at a librarian conference.  She was cute and bubbly and as part of the conference fee we each received a copy of Entwined. She not only signed every copy, she made us each a bead book mark to go in our copy. Despite this gracious introduction to the author,  I never got around to reading the book until this week.  This is a novelization of the Twelve Dancing Princesses story.  Of course the big challenge when you write a novel based on a fairy tale, is to resolve all the fantastic details and somehow have them make sense.  There are several issues with the Twelve Dancing Princesses story.  How could there be twelve sisters all old enough to go dancing?  Why do they keep going to dance each night?   What is their relationship with the king, their father?  Do they really want to marry their enchanted partners in the end?  Dixon does a reasonably good job dealing with these problems and making the story coherent. I especially liked the fact that the girls actually get to know their future husbands before they decide to marry them. The ending gets very exciting and there is a happy, if a bit improbable, resolution. I have been trying to decide if I like this one better or not as much as Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George, another Utah author. George's story stays more true to the original fairy tale. Still, I think I liked them about the same, though they handled the story very differently. It might be a fun exercise for a family to read both books together, and then discuss their similarities and differences. (472 p.)