I loved the concept of this book much more than the execution. Old fairy tales are weaved one into another, each one with a significant modern twist. However, the novelty got old really quickly and I felt cheated.
It was almost as Donoghue tried too hard to make these stories work. No, just because you make a character lesbian doesn't give a story any value. The writing is often too simplistic and the power of the original fairy tales is lost. ( )

I seem to have a tumultuous relationship with Emma Donoghue. I recently read The Pull of the Stars (review of that to follow) and I felt it was time to delve back into her past catalogue. (I read both Room and Astray a number of years ago and enjoyed both).

Kissing The Witch pieces together and retells fairytales with a decidedly feminist and often queer take, seemed to be right up my street.

I really enjoyed the first few stories and the twists Donoghue puts on them. The magic she uses is very much earthly bound rather than fantastical and harkens back to traditional folk tales than any Disney version. The stories have a strong feminist slant. I particularly liked in a later story how a witch explains the ‘trick’ behind taking a girl’s voice away. Rather than them being standalone stories the end of one leads to the telling of the next so there is a sense of how all the female protagonists are linked.

However after a while it felt a bit repetitive and I longed for something with a bit more bite to get my teeth into.

This would be a great book to pick up and read each story when you have a few minutes without feeling like you were missing out but you can definitely see how Donoghue’s writing has progressed since this was published in the late 90s.

That said I do very much look forward to getting my hands on her new book Haven. ( )

This was interesting retelling of well-known fairy tales done with feminist twists in mind. Even though the tales are so short and there is not much space for characters development, the female characters were still pretty interesting and the lessons they've learned even more so. In most of the stories there is even a loving relationship between women and in all of them there is respect between all the female characters.

Emma Donoghue had this idea of ending each story with the main character asking another character about their own story and in this way all of them are connected brilliantly. That was a really neat idea that I liked very much. Sometimes a character that was meant to be a villain in the original tale is the heroine in the next tale. They are all told by women, but they do have different personalities and perspectives of the situation at hand.

I must confess there was one story I didn't get what it was a retelling of. After searching about it I found out it was Thumbelina. All the others were easy to get by the elements in the text. I also tried to find which original tale was the last story about until I found out it was the only original one in this collection. So, that wasn't me being dumb after all.

My ratings for each story:
1 - The Tale of the Shoe (Cinderella) - 3 stars
I liked it. Her realization of who she was and what she wanted was great. There was only a small thing that bothered me and that was the main character falling in love with the fairy godmother that was hinted to be sort of a mother figure. That put me in mind of the girl dating her own mother and I hated it, but that might have been just my interpretation and others will not perceive it that way.

2 - The Tale of the Bird (Thumbelina) - 3 stars
I found that this was created with the idea of Thumbelina not being small, but feeling small. I must say this is the story I remember the least. I only remember that she hoped for freedom and had a plan to run away from her life someday.

3 - The Tale of the Rose (Beauty and the Beast) - 4 stars
4 - The Tale of the Apple (Snow White) - 5 stars
Probably my favourite in this book, along with the one of The Little Mermaid. The respect between Snow White and the "Evil" Queen was good to see.

5 - The Tale of the Handkerchief (The Goose Girl) - 3 stars
6 - The Tale of the Hair (Rapunzel) - 3 stars
7 - The Tale of the Brother (The Snow Queen) - 3.5. stars
8 - The Tale of the Spinster (Rumpelstilskin) - 3 stars
9 - The Tale of the Cottage (Hansel and Gretel) - 3 stars
10 - The Tale of the Skin (Donkeyskin) - 4 stars
11 - The Tale of the Needle (Sleeping Beauty) - 3 stars

12 - The Tale of the Voice (The Little Mermaid) - 5 stars
This was probably my favourite of all of them. The witch in this story is the best character in the book. There is also a scene where the main character wonder if all the other women lost their voices too because they remain silent in the presence of men and all the commentary was great.

13 - The Tale of the Kiss - 3.5 stars
Not the best, but pretty good for an original. ( )

These are engaging twists on classic fairy tales. The fun is trying to figure out which ones. ( )

I enjoyed this interesting collection of fairytales turned upside down, inside out, and sideways. With 13 tales spanning from a shoe to a kiss, they are interwoven in such a way that each introduces the next one that follows. All is not how it seems nor how we’ve been told it was once upon a time and far, far away.

If you like Fairytales, and especially ones that swerve away from the traditional elements, characters, and tellings, then you will certainly like this book, Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue. ( )