Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier

Title: Wildwood Dancing

Author: Juliet Marillier

Pages: 400

Finished: August 9, 2017

First Sentence: I've heard it said that girls can't keep secrets.

Summary: Jena and her sisters go dancing every full moon in the fairy realm located in the woods behind their home. When their father leaves for the winter to hopefully avoid the cold and get healthy again, he leaves two oldest sisters in charge with help from their cousin. When their cousin takes over the household and threatens to bring down the woods, it's up to Jena and her sisters to figure a way out of their situation. Part Twelve Dancing Princesses, part Dracula, and part Frog Prince, this is a very interesting story set in Transylvania.

Thoughts: The book took a little while to hook me. Cezar was intensely unlikable, to the point where I actually threw my book across the room in anger at him. The gaslighting was intense and very uncomfortable.  I did really appreciate a fairy tale set in Romania. I don't know my Romanian folklore so well, and I'm really looking forward to studying it more. In the end, I really did like the book, and I'm glad the bad guy got what was coming to him. I also really enjoyed the fact that the dancing was what the girls wanted to do rather than something they were forced to do by a malicious spirit as so many of the retellings talk about.

Read for my retelling challenge.