For my first book of the new year I was super excited for this one. Marissa Meyer is one of my favorite, auto-buy authors so when I saw that Gilded was up for preorder, I snagged one. The cover, beautiful! And it took me a while before I saw the eyes peering out at you from beneath the crown, so that was a neat little surprise. Y’all know I love a good retelling of the classic fairytales and that is something Marissa Meyer excels at, so when I heard this one would be about Rumpelstiltskin I was super pumped.
Then I started reading… I can’t stand this main character you guys. Serilda is a straight up liar. She lies about everything, even things she doesn’t need to! And that all barrels down to her ending up in the situation she gets into. That was my first impression of her, and unfortunately one that stuck with me throughout the entirety of the book. I wasn't able to truly find anything redeeming or admirable about her. She doesn't keep her promises and lots of innocents pay for that again and again. Bummer. As much as I didn’t like her character, there was one character I did grow fond of. Gild, the one who shows up to save her lying butt.
As always I will refrain from doing any spoilers for those who still want to try and read it, but the story line was one of the few things that seemed to stay on track and make sense. The world was well developed, and the descriptions were alright. Much better than the characters, so that is what pushed me through into finishing this book. If I had anything invested in Serilda I would say that the book was not long enough, and true enough this is going to be a series. However, I don’t particularly want to know what happens to her. For the age group this book is supposed to be (young adult) it is horribly sad and death is continuous and gruesome throughout the tale. There is no reprieve from the darkness and no happy ending for this fairy tale—definitely closer to the Brothers Grimm rather than Disney. And the romance subplot… yikes. There is no spark, no real development of a relationship. It just was very thrown together and because they have no other real options, they are forced together in very unromantic and frankly ridiculous ways.
As excited as I was for this book and in spite of my love of Marissa Meyer’s past books, I honestly will probably put this on my shelf and forget about (or do my best to.) Sad day… but I am going to jump back into my next read and hope that it is as wonderful as I had hoped Gilded would be…
Have you read Gilded? What were your thoughts?
Happy reading!
J.R. Molt
Top Quotes:
“It would appear that you’re trying to be aggravating, but that is my talent, I’ll have you know.”
