Once Upon a Time: Red's Untold Tale by Wendy ToliverMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I thought, given that this was based on one of the best shows on TV right now, that this would be a good piece of supplementary material. Not really. It could've functioned as an okay story on its own, but its connection to Once Upon A Time raised my expectations too much for a book that proved quite mediocre, actually. It just felt a little too been-there-done-that at points, and the writing itself was quite distracting. For one thing, a surprising number of modern, real-world expressions found their way into the dialogue (you wouldn't expect the same book to feature "what in the land?" and "Peeping Tom," would you?) Then there was the absurdly high concentration of "Said Bookisms" ("he answered," "she greeted," etc.) That last one is a particular pet peeve of mine ever since I was shown a similar error in a Dan Brown dialogue tag (the use of "reminded" without a direct object), and now I keep wanting to see all dialogue tags have intransitive and transitive verbs used correctly.
Maybe next time, I'll think twice before picking up an OUAT spinoff book.
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