Dorothy Must Die

by Danielle Paige
published: HarperCollins, 2014
pages: 452

Amy Gumm is just a girl from Kansas that nobody particularly likes, not even her mother.  But when a tornado sweeps her off her feet and she lands in Oz, Amy's world is turned upside down.  However, this Oz doesn't look like the Oz of the books or the movie.  Dorothy has taken control and zapped the magic from the land.  Amy meets a cast witches and wizards who have decided that she is the only one that can save Oz from Dorothy's tyranny.  The only question is, can Amy be the person everyone wants her to be; can she really kill Dorothy?

One of the things I thought was so cool about this book is it took old favorite characters and twisted them, made them new.  Dorothy still has her lion, scarecrow, and tin man but they are far from the characters we met in the original.  Dorothy is nothing like the sweet mild-tempered girl she's supposed to be either.  I love that the characters surprised me and that they were strange and eerie, mad even.  It was nice to hate characters that I had previously loved.

While Amy is an out of the ordinary, hot-tempered, very relatable girl, I found her annoying at times.  She whined quite a bit for being transported to a previously considered fairytale land.  Granted, Amy did have very good reasons for whining, (like, she had no clue what she was doing and no one would tell her) it still grew tiring.  Also, I know she's a teenage girl but please can we not focus on how attractive she finds every teenage male in this book.  There are way more important things to think about.

I do like that Amy uses aggression as a defense mechanism and she has the potential to harness it into something productive.  The whole idea that someone who is considered nothing by everyone at home can be considered someone great is beautiful.  It teaches importance, everyone is important even if they don't agree.

This book made me angry, but in a good way.  Here's why:  I didn't know it was part of a series, therefore I expected wrap-up and closure at the end of this novel.  I did not get that.  Instead, I got the set up, the why-isn't-this-ending confusion and the holy-crap-when-does-the-next-book-come-out panic.  I am relieved to know that I only have to wait until the end of March. Gah!  This book snuck up on me and I will try to wait patiently for the next book in this series.

Stars: 4/5

Praise:

"Reader's of Baum's books will take special delight in seeing new twists on the old characters, and they will greet the surprise climactic turnabout with the smugness of insiders."
     --Kirkus Reviews

"Gone are the days of rainbows, Lollipop Guilds and pretty much anything to sing about in a major key.  For those willing to go on a quest with a heroine more attuned to our times than the Dust Bowl era, there's no place like it.
     --USA Today

"Paige delivers a solid, intense, and strange narrative that draws deeply on its source material."
     --Publishers Weekly

A Full House Reading Challenge 2015 book.
Alphabet Soup Challenge book.