ARC Review: Stitching Snow

Synopsis:

Princess Snow is missing.

Her home planet is filled with violence and corruption at the hands of King Matthias and his wife as they attempt to punish her captors. The king will stop at nothing to get his beloved daughter back-but that's assuming she wants to return at all.

Essie has grown used to being cold. Temperatures on the planet Thanda are always sub-zero, and she fills her days with coding and repairs for the seven loyal drones that run the local mines.

When a mysterious young man named Dane crash-lands near her home, Essie agrees to help the pilot repair his ship. But soon she realizes that Dane's arrival was far from accidental, and she's pulled into the heart of a war she's risked everything to avoid.

In her enthralling debut, R.C. Lewis weaves the tale of a princess on the run from painful secrets . . . and a poisonous queen. With the galaxy's future-and her own-in jeopardy, Essie must choose who to trust in a fiery fight for survival.

It took me seventeen seconds to decide Jarom Thacker’s reputation as the sharpest fighter on Thanda had been exaggerated. At twice my size—and age—he was quick, forcing me to move or risk getting pinned against the cage, but he made a rookie mistake. Like everyone else who came through Mining Settlement Forty-Two, he aimed for my gut. So predictable.

Wouldn’t want to botch a pretty girl’s face, right? Idiot.

pg. 1

If you’re a fan of Marissa Meyer’s Cinder, you’ll love Stitching Snow. Don’t be that person who doesn’t read this book because you think it’s exactly the same as Cinder. It’s not. It has similar elements, but it’s definitely it’s own entity altogether.

There’s romance, there’s sci-fi action, there’s mystery, there are elements from the fairy-tale…there are attractive, interesting guys:

The boy was beautiful in a way that didn’t make sense on a rock like Thanda. Golden skin that saw more sun in a day than we saw in a whole cycle, strong cheekbones and jaw like an artist had drawn him, and brown hair with just the slightest curl. The one less-than-beautiful feature was a bloody gash on his forhead.

I couldn’t breathe. He was terrifying.

pg. 11

Lewis does an excellent job creating interesting landscapes; Dane (aforementioned beautiful boy) and Essie (main character) visit multiple planets, and Lewis makes each one memorable. As far as I could tell, there weren’t exactly races outside of humans (although there were different ‘nationalities’ of humans), so there weren’t any super bizarre sci-fi aliens.

The fairy tale references were there but they weren’t awkward or cheesy; Lewis does a good job integrating the two genres without making it weird that Snow White is running around in a space ship.

Essie was pretty hardcore, but there were moments where I wanted to shake her and be like “JUST LET SOMEONE HELP YOU.” She was super into doing things by herself, which, given her past, is understandable, but got a little annoying there in the middle. Her relationship with Dane was quite interesting; there’s a lot of hate and distrust going on, which made for interesting character and plot development.

There was some conflict with Essie’s father that was really sudden near the end. I saw some of the signs a few chapters before, but it didn’t seem to be important until suddenly it was happening. While I wouldn’t say it bothered me, I would say it was a little abrupt. On the other hand, there was some nicely developed political business going on between the planet Windsong and pretty much everyone else. This was a great addition to the second half of the book, giving Essie and Dane yet another mystery to solve.

With solid writing, a fun hybrid of fairy tale and sci-fi elements, swoon worthy romance and mysteries aplenty, Stitching Snow is definitely one to immediately add to your shelf.

If you liked Stitching Snow, here’s what I recommend reading next: Cinder by Marissa Meyer, Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi

*All quotations taken from an ARC and are therefore subject to change in final edition*