This is one of those books that I really wanted to like. I purchased it knowing that this book would be exciting, I was almost cocky about it. I loved the cover, I loved the premise of the book, and I love Baba Yaga. So, of course I went into this book with high hopes.
​    Right at the start I realized this wasn’t doing it for me. I wasn’t a fan of the younger generation portion of the story, which is what the book really focuses on. I enjoyed the retelling of the past. … I wish the author would’ve focused more on that. Or she would’ve brought more of the past into the future. It felt cheap.

Cheap. In the sense of it didn’t have any soul. There was nothing really to the characters. There was nothing that as a reader pulled me in and made me want to know more. It was so fanciful and magical that it felt like some weird Netflix show. It didn’t feel like a true retelling of the very famous ‘Baba Yaga’ or continuation of the fairytale.
    The house was alive, but we didn’t get to really know the house. If the author was going to make the house a character, then dive into that and make it a character. But instead we went about it half way.

I will add that you can tell the author is talented. The book didn’t work for me isn’t due to a lack of talent in the way the author writes. I feel as if the author took on too big of a subject, tried to do too much with it, tried to make this have a universal appeal instead of really digging deep into what the story was about (see above Netflix comment). This is a dark story and it should’ve been a dark retelling. Or it was a dark story and it could’ve been retold it in a positive manner. For instance, showing that Baba Yaga was misunderstood. Which I felt sometimes the story was leaning that way, but then it it wasn’t?
    Overall, I stand by the author was trying to do too much at once. When trying to pick the subject of a very famous fairy tale you go into it with all you have and stick to the core. Instead, we have a book that whether it was a retelling or not, couldn’t deliver.