The Bibliophile's Bookshelf

This is the third installment of my Saturday Spotlight series that focuses on cozy books. This will last until the end of December, so there are two more weeks after this!

My first cozy book was Heist Society and the second was The Princess Academy. You can find these posts here and here.

This week’s cozy book is the Twisted Tale: Part of Your World by Liz Braswell.

This series reimagines famous Disney movies by asking a What If question. The question for this book is: What if Ariel had never defeated Ursula?

Admittedly, I don’t love The Little Mermaid movie. My namesake was inspired by the protagonist of this movie, so I grew up with The Little Mermaid being everywhere, which might have fueled my dislike for the movie.

This book is actually my favorite of the Twisted Tales installments. It takes place ten years after the events of the movie, so the characters are more mature.

Ariel is also mute in this story. Since she didn’t win Eric’s heart, she lost her voice and since she didn’t defeat Ursula, Triton is dead. Due to her mistakes, Ariel is the ruler of Atlantica.

Eric also realizes that he isn’t exactly happy with how things are, either. Throughout the course of the book Ariel and Eric try to fix everything that went wrong and find each other again.

One thing that I like about this book is that Ariel and Eric aren’t together for most of the book, so we get to see these two characters develop on their own more so than in the movie.

Truly, I love this book. It has some action and romance, but it still has the classic Disney endings. I highly recommend this book and the series in general!

Summary:

Five years after the (twisted) events of the film, Ariel is now the queen of Atlantica, and Ursula is running Eric’s kingdom on land. But when the sea witch threatens Atlantica once more, Ariel finds herself returning to a world (and a prince) she thought she’d left behind forever.