“What I mean is, all the terrible things that happen in fairy tales seem real. Or not real, but genuine. Life is unfair, and the bad guys keep winning and good people die. But I like how that's not always the end of it...Evil is real, but so is good. They always say fairy tales are simplistic, black and white, but I don't think so. I think they're complicated. That's what I love about them.”

The Grimm Legacy is about a young girl, Elizabeth, who works in a Repository. A Repository is like a library for items, some of these items are normal and some of these items are magical. Like the items in the Grimm section, these items were collected by the famous brothers and inspired their stories. When Elizabeth proves she's trustworthy enough to work for them she slowly starts to discover the wonders that the Repository holds. However items are going missing and there's a giant bird stalking the workers. Elizabeth must figure out who she can trust and who is dangerous.

This has been on my TBR for a long time, depending on where you look it says YA lit and other places says childrens. Either way I picked this up with not much in the way of expectations, I wanted something easy and simple and that it's exactly what I got. One thing I did like is that Shulman has based this series on authors, she could have easily wrote a seires with each book focusing on magical objects connected to famous fairy tales to attract children. The second books is based H.G Wells and the third, Edgar Allen Poe, not authors you associate with children or childrens lit and I'm intrigued to read the next one as each of these are standalones but set in the same Repository.

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Hey!! Thanks so much for watching and I hope you enjoyed, if you could take the time to like this video on YouTube I would be forever grateful. Like Instagram YouTube has it's share of problems, and hitting that like button would be an amazing help. So thank you for showing your support.

A fun YA Contemporary Fantasy that incorporates Fairy Tales without being a straight forward retelling.

BOOK DETAILS:

The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman, read by Julia Whelan, published by Random House Audio (2012) / Length: 9 hrs 40 min

SERIES INFO:

This is Book #1 of 3 in the "Grimm Legacy" series. All 3 are available on audio.

SUMMARY:

I've read a lot of modern fairy tale retellings, this isn't strictly one of those. Although Elizabeth's life has elements of Cinderella (she even ends up with a single shoe on at one point), this isn't a Cinderella story. Instead it is a book that asks, "What if the magical objects from fairy tales were real and you could borrow them?"

Elizabeth is a genuinely kind person who wants to do what's right but isn't always sure what that is.

I am marking this with a Diversity tag, even though Elizabeth is white, since Mark is African American and Anjali's Indian (the South Asian kind).

Note: Audible has this categorized as a middle grade, which is incorrect; it is YA.

THE GRIMM LEGACY

Polly Sulman

The Grimm Legacy is a fun young adult mystery to read. Some fantasy, some fairy tales, a big library, and a few teens who may be seen as nerdy. This book
is story is about Elizabeth and her new job at a materials circulation library. Not a typical library, as Elizabeth finds out, but she finds it a job that she enjoys. She gets the "key" to a special collections, and with her friends, gets pulled into a mystery of who is "stealing" items form the library.
The story did keep my interest. Even some of the adult characters were interesting. I would definitely recommend this to a preteen or teen who likes references to various fairy tales and a little mystery too.
The Grimm Legacy is the first of a series.