Desert Online General Trading LLC
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Desert Online General Trading LLC
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
From School Library Journal Gr 7 Up—Sixteen-year-old princess-in-training Aislynn attends classes to hone vital skills like sewing and flirting—but her most important endeavor at the academy is to learn how to contain her "curse," magical abilities that must be squashed in order to be deemed "safe" and marry a rich male heir. Aislynn is not doing a great job in keeping her powers under wraps and gets reassigned to fairy godmother classes. A demotion of this magnitude is a fate almost as horrible as any young royal could imagine—but the worst of all would be to "stray" from the right path and leave society. She studies how to use her magic in a controlled way and care for her charge. Sweet young Linnea has lost her parents and is associated with a bad family (her maternal aunt is an infamous stray known as the Wicked Queen). Aislynn finds the young princess to be fully under the thumb of her advisor, Madame Moira. Meanwhile, Aislynn makes some new friends in carriage driver Ford, kitchen maid Brigid, and charming gardener Thackery. She learns of an underground ring of servants who help endangered "orphans" (those believed to have been kidnapped by the Wicked Queen) escape to safety. The heroine soon discovers that the world she believed in is built upon lies and manipulations designed to keep those in power at the top. This fun tale will appeal to reluctant female readers. Sussman explores some unique themes, including a LGBTQ relationship, and even a yummy recipe in this fantasy with supernatural and romantic elements.—Tara Kehoe, New Jersey State Library Talking Book and Braille Center, Trenton Read more Review “Sussman delightfully mixes dystopian tension with retold fairy tales, and the result is something wholly original.” (Booklist)“The creative use of the role of fairy godmother is fascinating.” (Kirkus Reviews)“The ending is exhilarating and nicely sets up for a sequel.” (San Francisco Book Review)“This fun tale will appeal to reluctant female readers.” (School Library Journal)“A particularly intriguing portrait…of a girl entrenched in a culture that shames women and their magical abilities.” (Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books) Read more From the Back Cover Princess Aislynn has long dreamed about attending her Introduction Ball, about dancing with the handsome suitors her adviser has chosen for her, about meeting her true love and starting her happily ever after.When the night of the ball finally arrives and Nerine Academy is awash with roses and royalty, Aislynn wants nothing more than to dance the night away, dutifully following the Path that has been laid out for her. She does not intend to stray.But try as she might, Aislynn has never quite managed to control the magic that burns within her—magic brought on by wicked, terrible desires that threaten the Path she has vowed to take.After all, it is wrong to want what you do not need. Isn't it? Read more About the Author Elissa Sussman received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and in a previous life managed animators and organized spreadsheets at some of the best animation studios in the world, including Nickelodeon, Disney, DreamWorks, and Sony Imageworks. You can find her name in the credits of The Croods, Hotel Transylvania, The Princess and the Frog, and Tangled. She lives in Los Angeles with her boyfriend and their rescue dog, Basil. Stray is her first novel. Read more
R**R
A must read for the young feminist
As a passionate reader of fairytale retellings and remixes my interest was quite piqued by STRAY but when I saw the comparison to The Handmaid's Tale I knew it was a must-read for me. To give some background I attempted to read THT when I was 15 but my very religious and strict parents caught me and took it away. I eventually read it as an adult and the irony was not lost on me. STRAY has many similarities in how its society is built. Girls and women need their father and later their husband to contain them, to keep them pure and from using their magic.It was so compelling that even though I started reading it as a borrowed audiobook from the library I went and ordered a hardcover copy for myself before I was even done. It's just so compelling and the feminist in me was sated by every tiny rebellion. If you want a book for a young woman who needs to see that she has more value than her physical beauty, that she shouldn't feel beholden to society's ideas of what being beautiful or female are I cannot recommend this book enough. And if you're a young woman who desires these things for yourself I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did. Sure, it's a bit romantic and it has a mystery and it's a bit of a fairytale but by nature fairytales were intended to teach lessons.There are a lot of books I consider must reads but this is definitely one of the first I wished I could send back through time into my own teenage hands. Teen me would have very much appreciated this book as much as adult me did.
M**N
Decent Fantasy Start
Aislynn cannot control her curse, and therefore she is forced to abandon the life she always thought she would leave in order to stay on the path.I found the book to be unfinished at times. There were some cool concepts/ideas, but at the same time those ideas that shape the world only feel partially explored. This also leads to the characters feel very surface-level. We get some peeks in, but not enough to make them feely fully developed. Still, there was enough promise in the first one and the ending was interesting enough that I would read the 2nd book. Stray might have been more about setting the scene then having the book stand on its own. Hopefully the 2nd delivers on the promise of better things to come.
H**Y
Fairytale with a dystopian twist
All I can really say is "Wow"I didn't expect to be sucked into a story I bought in the discount section of the kindle store. Aislynn is the kind of protagonist you can't help but root for as she fights to overcome each obstacle presented to her. The story is full of twists and turns that you can't see coming, characters you can't help but love, and a romance that'll leave you swooning.Definitely recommend for anyone who enjoyed Ella Enchanted by Margaret Peterson Haddix.
O**Y
I loved this book cover to cover
I loved this book cover to cover, it was addicting and I couldn't put it down! Anyone with a love for fairy tales will love this adventurous story! My only complaint was that at the beginning, names and places commonly used by the characters were kind of just thrown out there and not explained, as if the reader was supposed to already know what the terms meant. I was afraid that I had started the second book by accident at the beginning but later in the book learned what they all meant. But other than that, it was a fantastic, quick read! :)
K**R
Omg this contemporary fairytale
This book was a dazzling mix of every fairytale, fable, and nursery rhyme you grew up with. It brings in issues that are very real in today's world, and mixes it with some magic. I can see myself using this novel in the classroom.
K**K
I loved it!
This is an original fairy tale unlike any you've ever read . I really enjoyed this book and it makes you think and trying figure out what is going on the entire book . And it comes with the recipe for that bread that they make in the book too so that's fun and I look forward to making it. Also...it's clean no sex no drugs no swearing
S**H
Little things got on my nerves, but if you overlook them, it's a good book
Aislynn lives in a world where all women have magic, but if not contained, that magic will cause them to stray from The Path they are given in life. Aislynn has always struggled to keep a lid on the powerful magic bottled up inside her. Unfortunately she has an occurrence that sets her life on a completely different Path of being a fairy godmother. Aislynn constantly struggles to be and do as she’s told, but that becomes increasingly difficult…This book took a while to get into. I really considered putting it down and never finishing it, but I trudged along. About a fourth to a third of the way into the book, I finally started to become interested and I didn’t want to put it down.The synopsis of this book is, honestly, terrible. I expected this book to be completely different, where Aislynn was a spoiled, selfish girl who acted out, which caused her to become a fairy godmother. Actually, though, she couldn’t control her magic, which caused her later fate. This was completely different than what I was led to believe and I felt so much more for Aislynn in the way the book actually turned out than if she really was how the synopsis had led on.I thought the plot of this book was good, but I wished there was a bit more explained earlier on. Aislynn slowly learns more and unravels the mysteries surrounding her, but I was so often confused in this book. Many of the concepts and idea in this book were unique, but I just wished they were brought about in a clearer manner. It took me too long to figure out different terminology (that wasn’t really blatantly explained) and to understand the reasoning behind a bunch of the rules in this book.I really did like Aislynn as a character. She struggled with questioning the system that she’d lived in her whole life and I loved the changes that I saw her go through. She bloomed in a wonderful way and really found herself. I really wish her self-harming was explored just a bit further. That’s a huge topic to tackle and I felt it was almost just mentioned and forgotten. There’s so much more that Elissa Sussman could have done with it to add even more emotional depth to Aislynn. Aislynn was still a great character as is, but Elissa Sussman could have made Aislynn even better.As far as secondary characters go, I liked Thackery and Brigid, but I found I didn’t really care to see any of the others again. I even was getting tired of Linea (the girl Aislynn is the fairy godmother to). All the characters, other than Aislynn, felt a bit two-dimensional. They just seemed to have a short list of qualities and traits, but that was as far as they went. They were all a great supporting cast, but Aislynn feel really like the only main character (at least depth-wise).There was one event in the book that happens out of the blue. It is never explained further. Maybe the next book will mention it, but I think it is unlikely. It bothered me that this thing that contradicted so much in the book would just suddenly happen and everything acting like it was okay. After it, I enjoyed the book enough that I chose to not dwell on it further, but it really felt like a cheap trick to force the plot to go a specific way.Overall, I really did enjoy this book. I wish that there weren’t so many little things that got on my nerves. If you can overlook things like that, then you can really enjoy this unique story. There really is a bunch of good in this book, but I wish it could have a bit more work done on it.Lastly, the cover is beautiful. This was part of the reason I was so interested in this book.
J**R
One Star
I got so confused with her writing