Review: Blew Me Away! (Like Dorothy's Tornado)
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 18, 2013
For this review and more, visit Such a Novel Idea (dot com).Well, these days it takes a lot for me to be blown away by a book, but this NOVELLA rocked my socks off.We're placed right back in Kansas, inside Dorothy's head two years after she has returned from Oz.  And there is a stark contrast from the doe-eyed Judy Garland version of Dorothy.  She is much grittier, much more sarcastic, and overall very unhappy.  Immediately you can tell Dorothy has changed from who she was when she clicked her heels.The book was long and filled with lots of Oz goodness -- many of the things you didn't get to see in the 1939 classic.  If you've read Wicked or the L. Frank Baum's original stories (yes, there is more than just one!), then you'll pick up a lot of the places, words, and story lines that diverge from the movie.  If not, I'd recommend reading both!  However, this novella does give enough back story to give you an idea of the expanded world that is Oz.A lot of the things that took place in the novella were predictable -- time had passed much more quickly than Dorothy expected it to, she slowly started going *wait for it* evil, but the story was so facinating and well-written that I didn't care.  I was giddy practically the entire time I was reading it.Seeing Dorothy go mad (and bad) was like watching Once Upon a Time when Peter Pan was evil.  It breaks your heart a LITTLE bit to see a fairy tale you loved so much as a kid get turned on its head.  But it also makes you think -- and really broadens the idea that we don't always know the whole story.  Of course, at times I kind of wanted to shake Dorothy and tell her to quit acting like such a brat.  But, I understood why it was happening.If you're planning to read Dorothy Must Die, I 100% recommend picking up this novella.  It was really smart for Harper to put this out ahead of time.  Plus, you'll get a short excerpt of DMD -- just enough to make you flip through the calendar and ask "Is it April yet?!"