Mirror Mended, A – Alix E. Harrow

A Mirror Mended

- Alix E. Harrow

Midland, WA

June 1, 2022

Goodreads Book Blurb:

Zinnia Gray, professional fairy-tale fixer and lapsed Sleeping Beauty is over rescuing snoring princesses. Once you’ve rescued a dozen damsels and burned fifty spindles, once you’ve gotten drunk with twenty good fairies and made out with one too many members of the royal family, you start to wish some of these girls would just get a grip and try solving their own narrative issues.

Just when Zinnia’s beginning to think she can’t handle one more princess, she glances into a mirror and sees another face looking back at her: the shockingly gorgeous face of evil, asking for her help. Because there’s more than one person trapped in a story they didn’t choose. Snow White’s Evil Queen has found out how her story ends and she’s desperate for a better ending. She wants Zinnia to help her before it’s too late for everyone.

Will Zinnia accept the Queen’s poisonous request, and save them both from the hot iron shoes that wait for them, or will she try another path?

Series / Genres:

My Review:

***Thanks to NetGalley and Tordotcom for an eARC of this book. The following review is my honest reflection on the text provided.

solid, good read:

☆☆☆☆☆ 4/5

Even better than A Spindle Splintered, I loved A Mirror Mended.

I would tell you what kind of animal it was, but I have no idea, and looking at it made my brain cramp. So I'll just say it was bad. Like, if a snake fucked a tarantula and their babies died in a tar pit, only to be reanimated by a necromancer who graduated at the absolute bottom of his class.

Darker and more complex, there’s a lot more pain and violence in A Mirror Mended. Relationships that were established in A Spindle Splintered are strained, and emotions are running high. While Zinnia is used to travelling through Sleeping Beauty universes, she’s not prepared to be pulled into an entirely new fairy tale to save a villain she doesn’t want to help.

You have to make the best of whatever story you were born into, and if your story happens to suck ass, well, maybe you can do some good before you go.
And if that's not enough, if you still want more in your greedy, selfish heart: I recommend you run, and keep running

I loved that by trying to do good, Zinnia’s actions have caused reverberations throughout these fairy tale worlds, in the same way that her constant need to save others has affected her own relationships and life. Living your whole life under a death sentence and finding a possible loophole would cause some emotional damage, and it’s very easy to see here.

Is that what I've been doing, these last five years? Trying to outrun my own ending? Throwing away every chance at happiness just because it was fleeting?

This duology is a quick but worthwhile read. Containing only two novellas, I wish they were longer or that there were more to come, but I am happy with the closure obtained with A Mirror Mended and would highly recommend the read.

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