Book Review: The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale

The Goose Girl

While reading The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale, I felt I was in the middle of a fairy tale. I should admit right now, I am a very big fan of re-told fairy tales, doesn’t matter if it’s the 100th re-telling of Cinderella or an off-beat tale, like the twelve dancing princesses. If it’s a re-told fairy tale, chances are pretty huge that I am going to read it.

The premise for The Goose Girl is fantastic:

“She was born with her eyes closed and a word on her tongue, a word she could not taste.

Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, spends the first years of

her life under her aunt’s guidance learning to communicate with animals. As she grows up Ani develops the skills of animal speech, but is never comfortable speaking with people, so when her silver-tongued lady-in-waiting leads a mutiny during Ani’s journey to be married in a foreign land, Ani is helpless and cannot persuade anyone to assist her. Becoming a goose girl for the king, Ani eventually uses her own special, nearly magical powers to find her way to her true destiny.

From the Grimm’s fairy tale of the princess who became a goose girl before she could become queen, Shannon Hale has woven an incredible, original, and magical tale of a girl who must find her own unusual talents before she can lead the people she has made her own. “

as always from Goodreads.com

Shannon Hale’s writing style leant perfectly to the retelling of a fairy tale. It was simple, but not to the point of being condescending. I liked that she didn’t try to put in a bunch of awkward bells and whistles, but just let the story come naturally. Honestly, I think the simplicity sucked me in. After reading North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, I needed something with less nuance (wouldn’t want my brain to explode), this was the perfect book for that.

In case you can’t tell, I really loved this book. I have to say, I cared so much about the main character, Ani, that I wound up becoming very enraged at certain parts. Let’s just say I don’t like when certain characters don’t get their just desserts. I’m not about to give away spoilers, but I couldn’t stop turning the pages because I wanted justice to be done. I mean, I guess I knew what was going to happen, since I had read the spoil-tastic amazon review, but I sort of forgot all of that and let myself be transported to Bayern. Personally, I find that to be a great standard to judge a book by. If I can get so into a book that I forget it’s a hot day in hell, NY, then to me, that is a fantastic book.

I would recommend Grey Goose if this was an adult book, but it’s not. I think a glass of apple juice would be perfect for reading this book, since apple-juice makes me think of story hour at the library and in elementary school, where the teacher or librarian would read a book to you and then afterward there was apple juice and cookies. I think part of the reason I will treasure The Goose Girl is that it hearkens back to story hour days, it brings me to a simpler time when I didn’t have bills or anything to worry about and could just lose myself in a story.

Disclosure: Purchased copy.

Amazon/ Barnes & Noble/ Better World Books/ The Book Depository/ Indie Bound

Tagged as: Bloomsbury, Book Review, Fantasy, Shannon Hale, strong women, The Goose Girl, Young Adult

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April (Books&Wine) – who has written 1065 posts on Good Books And Good Wine.

April is 24 years old. She is an educator. In her free time she can be found reading, working out, or eating junk food. She often wears her sunglasses at night.

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