I am so excited to be participating in the Blog Tour for Slumber by Tamara Blake! I so enjoyed this book, quite a bit more than I was expecting to actually. You really don’t want to miss this one!

4 Stars

Author: Tamara Blake

Genre: YA Fantasy/Paranormal

Pages: 192

Publisher: Diversion Books

Best for: 18+ (disturbing images, sexual situations)

Check it out: Good Reads | Diversion Books | Amazon | Barnes and Noble

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Good Reads Summary:
Once upon a time, Ruby believed in magic…
When Ruby volunteers to take her mother’s housecleaning shift at the gothic Cottingley Heights mansion, she thinks it’s going to be business as usual. Clean out the fridge, scrub toilets, nothing too unusual. But nothing could prepare her for the decadent squalor she finds within. Rich people with more money than sense trashing their beautiful clothes and home just because they can. After the handsome Tam discovers her cleaning up after him and his rich friends, Ruby has never felt more like a character from her sister’s book of fairy tales.

Tam sees beyond Ruby’s job and ratty clothes, and sweeps her off her feet, treating her like a real princess, but Ruby is sure this beautiful boy is too good to be true. And as one tragedy after another befalls Ruby and her family, Ruby painfully learns that magic is all too real, and it always comes with a price.

So I, like many reviews I have read, assumed this would be your run-of-the-mill fairy tale retelling. Fortunately, I was VERY wrong. I’ll agree with other reviewers that this book is weird. But it’s definitely not the weirdest thing I’ve ever read.

I really liked Ruby. She was a tough girl; she didn’t complain about her horrible situation, she sucked it up and dealt with it. And did her situation get HORRIBLE.

I mean, literally anything that could have gone wrong for her happened. It was miserable. And Tam. I didn’t really like him until the last chapter. Because he was totally playing her the whole time and she knew it! But it made for a different relationship than most YA books nowadays, so that was refreshing. I mean, sure, he had the whole sexy adorable charming smooth talker rich thing going for him, but I didn’t trust him one bit through the entire book.

Those antagonists…they were CREEPY. Sadistic. Hedonistic. All in all a pretty terrible crowd. They murdered people, had orgies, drank until they were completely wasted, did drugs, and did all manner of other bizarre and dangerous things. They set the tone for the book, meaning this book is DARK.
I was pleased with Ruby’s reaction to this creepster group. She was like

And then there was some of this

This would have been me:

I really would have just turned to complete and utter denial. She literally steps into a nightmare. There’s really no other word for it. Which was an AWESOME conflict. The stakes were so high, she was literally suffocating (no, literally. She was actually suffocating).

Ruby’s main concern was taking care of her ailing mom and her younger sister. I liked that there was a big focus on her being the caretaker, because as a 17 year, that’s an impossible situation, which added a nice layer of conflict outside of the fantasy conflict.

All in all, this book was creepy, dark, and all around AWESOME. With a terribly infuriating cliffhanger of an ending, I am anxiously awaiting the sequel. Highly recommended for fans of fairy tale retellings, paranormal and fantasy novels!