If you're looking for an escape from the "real" world (and who doesn't right now?), I highly recommend the following:
Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Page
I love retellings of old stories. Wicked (both novel and musical) is one of my favorites, but I also love Wide Sargasso Sea (Jane Eyre), When She Woke (The Scarlet Letter), and My Jim (Huckleberry Finn). It's interesting to look at the familiar from another character's perspective, or from another time period.
The first in a new trilogy, Page's revisionist take on the Oz stories takes us back to Kansas and introduces us to angsty teenage loner Amy Gumm. Living in a trailer with her alcoholic mom after her dad leaves to start a new family, Amy longs for something different, which of course, shows up in the form of a tornado, sweeping Amy, trailer, and her mom's pet rat, to Oz.
This is not the technicolor Oz Amy has grown up with, however. This Oz is drab, colorless, and everyone is running scared. Because Dorothy has also found a way back, and she and her cohorts are evil. Very, very evil. The Scarecrow is a mad scientist, performing horrific experiments on any who challenges Dorothy's leadership. The Lion has not only found his courage, but is sadistically preying on everyone around him as one of Dorothy's henchmen. And the Tin Man, desperately in love with the new ruler of Oz, will do anything to win her favor. It isn't long before Amy is recruited by the Wicked Witches and the underground resistance group. Her mission--kill Dorothy.
Part Oz-revisionist story, part Harry Potter in the magical aspects, and part Hunger Games (especially in Amy's training scenes), this is a fun, fast-paced read. I'm looking forward to the next one.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Sixteen-year-old Jacob has grown up listening to his grandfather's tales of the peculiar children, who lived at Miss Peregrine's--a home for orphaned children off the coast of Wales where his grandfather grew up after escaping from the Nazis during WWII. These children all had amazing, some may say other-worldly, talents, as evidenced by the box of pictures of his grandfather saved from his time there. After witnessing his grandfather's murder by a strange being, Jacob begins therapy, but eventually decides he needs to go to Wales to see if Miss Peregrine's still exists in order to truly find closure. When he arrives, he finds the house, but it's an abandoned bombed out shell and has been that way since the war. However, the children his grandfather knew are still there--and still very much alive. Jacob and the children must battle the forces that threaten to take over not only their world, but ours as well.
Again, the first of a trilogy, Riggs uses actual old photographs of the "children" to help tell his tale and has created a wonderfully dark, enchanting world.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
I'm ashamed to say this is the first Gaiman novel that I have read, but it is not going to be the last.
The narrator returns to his home in Sussex to attend a funeral. Although his childhood home no longer stands, the Hempstock Farm at the end of the lane does. Inexplicably drawn to the Farm, the narrator finds himself reliving long forgotten memories from his childhood. When he is seven, a visiting South African opal miner commits suicide on the Hempstock Farm. An ancient entity hears his dying sounds and comes to investigate. People begin to act strangely, and the narrator crosses to the Farm to discover the cause. There he encounters eleven year old Lettie, her mother, and grandmother. The women talk of other worlds, times beyond, and the Big Bang. Lettie sets out to banish the ancient force, taking the narrator with her. Unfortunately, he makes a mistake, unleashing the force out of the Farm and into his world. She takes the form of Ursula, who manipulates his parents and sister, drawing out everyone's darkest desires. In order to save him, the women must call upon ancient female wisdom, and risk everything in the process.
Gaiman is a master storyteller. This work is dark, creepy, magical, and soul-wrenching. I can't recommend it enough. Now I just have to figure which of his titles to read next.
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