I went back and forth between 3.5 and 4 stars for this one and rounded up mostly because the narration was well done. 

I spent a good chunk of the first many chapters convinced that this was going to be just like the French movie High Tension. There were so many similarities but it turns out it was very different. 

It's hard to describe this book without using the word "intense" so the title definitely fits. Although, that's not where the name comes from. You'll have to read it to find that out.

I definitely enjoyed the story and the two main characters. We get a pretty good look into the killer's head and I liked what Koontz did with him. He's not what I'm used to when it comes to reading about someone who enjoys torturing and killing people. Our heroine is interesting and bad-ass. And her childhood makes mine look like a lovely dream. 

There were some places where my attention waned and I kind of wish it had ended sooner than it actually did but I still enjoyed the shit out of this book. 

Still not sure this isn't the same basic plot of a French movie I saw several years ago. I don't think I've read the blurb yet since this was a recommendation from a friend.

Die, Snow White! Die, Damn You! is a retelling of the Snow White story, with elements from a few other stories, such as “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and even “Aladdin.” I really enjoyed Yuri Rasovsky's Sweeney Todd and the String of Pearls, and so I was looking forward to listening to this. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me at all.

This was a full-cast production, almost like a play, but with very little in the way of sound effects. The voice acting was fairly good, probably one of the best things about this audiobook. I'd likely have enjoyed it even more if Rasovsky had either refrained from including German words and phrases or if more of the cast had been able to pronounce those words and phrases without mangling them. Despite using the English version of Snow White's name in the title of the audiobook, Rasovsky named her Schneewittchen in the production. Everyone pronounced it as Shnee (rhymes with knee) vitshen, even the people who could pronounce the other German words just fine (maybe they were aiming for production-wide consistency?). It grated on my nerves a little.

The way the various story elements were blended together was pretty nice (although the Goldilocks reference was completely unnecessary), and the production even made use of some of the less popular aspects of the Snow White story, such as the stepmother eating the huntsman's evidence that he killed Snow White.

However, the humor almost never worked for me. It was generally very sexual. The new duchess is going to have to have her virginity inspected by a bunch of old guys! Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, I wonder how they're going to do that? The first monster Schneewittchen encounters in the forest tells her he won't eat her because he only eats good wives (and so he's always starving, haha), but then chooses to attack her in another way...by raping her. I guess? She was so bored by the experience that I didn't even realize at first what had happened.

During one of her attempts to kill Schneewittchen, the evil stepmother pretended to be a lamp seller and used a gratingly awful Chinese accent. Then there was the ending. I actually gasped when I realized what the big twist was going to be that would allow everyone to have their “happy ending.” A great big spoiler warning here:

So this was mostly a disappointment.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)