Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige

18053060I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't ask to be some kind of hero.
But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado—taking you with it—you have no choice but to go along, you know?
Sure, I've read the books. I've seen the movies. I know the song about the rainbow and the happy little blue birds. But I never expected Oz to look like this. To be a place where Good Witches can't be trusted, Wicked Witches may just be the good guys, and winged monkeys can be executed for acts of rebellion. There's still the yellow brick road, though—but even that's crumbling.
What happened? Dorothy.
They say she found a way to come back to Oz. They say she seized power and the power went to her head. And now no one is safe.
My name is Amy Gumm—and I'm the other girl from Kansas.
I've been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked.
I've been trained to fight.
And I have a mission.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                                            Rating: 5 of 5 stars
                                                                          Series book: Yes
                                                              Will I read the next book: Yes
When you first think Dorothy from the wizard of Oz, you see this:

Dorothy from this Oz? She's more like a sexed-up, evil Dorothy who, well, needs to die. Lets just be honest. She has no intention of going home and has instead decided to rule and ruin Oz as a Princess. But there's a new girl from Kansas walking the yellow brick road, and she's got pink hair and a major attitude. I loved the book even if it was a little...long(452 pages actually). There are some problems I had with the book, but the positive far out weighs the negative(for once). So get ready for some ranting and some fangirling all in one post.

The Negative:
The main character, Amy Gumm. 
So many things to say. So many problems. In the first few chapters, we find out Amy live in a trailer park with her mother who lives off of pills, alcohol, and bugles. Rough life? Yeah, that was made clear when Amy's mom left her alone to face a tornado. But throughout the first part of the book, she was constantly referencing just how crappy her life was back in Bumf**k, Kansas.
"Just pretend you're going down a waterslide at AquaLand, I told myself. It might have made me feel a little better if I'd ever actually been to AquaLand. My mom had never taken me."
Well, thank you Amy. Please remember that you are in a dark and dangerous Oz right now, you've got bigger problems than your lack of trips to amusement parks as a kid. Seriously. I get it. You wont be clicking your heels together any time soon. 

The fact that when the opportunity arose, she screwed up her chance to kill Dorothy.
She was alone with Dorothy, magic was blocked, all you had to do is walk up behind her and, you know, stabby stabby. Next time, I recommend not saying a sassy phrase about how you're gonna kill her before you kill her. Kind of clues her off that you're about to kill her. 

The Positive:
So one thing I absolutely adored was how dark Oz was. For one thing this was not the scariest thing in the new Oz. There was Dorothy, in all her magic creepiness; then there was the scarecrow, and he liked to experiment on people; and the lion, who fed off fear; and there were so many more creeptastic things. All the main characters in the story were twisted, Wicked became Good, Good became Wicked, and the line got blurred between the two. Dorothy Must Die was also incredibly violent and gruesome. At one point I actually winced from the violence. So fair warning on that.


And then there was Nox.
Wizard boy with a sad past(thanks to Dorothy) who fought for the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked and also had a thing for Amy. It didn't go anywhere really, but they had an undeniable connection and he kissed her (ooohhh). He seemed a little hot and cold, or just cold really, but I think in the next few books things are really gonna heat up. 


And then there was Amy's kick-ass transformation.
"Forgiveness can get you places, I guess. But sometimes you need to light a fire"From trailer trash with a rat on her shoulder to pink-haired bad-ass with a magic knife in a few hundred pages. At first I thought that I wouldn't be able to handle this book just because of how much Amy was making references to her crappy life back home, but she grew as the story went along and personally, I value good character development in a book since it  happens so rarely.

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