Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige

Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige
Series: Dorothy Must Die, #1
Source: Bought
Publisher: Harper Teen
Publication Date: April 1, 2014

I 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:
Remove the Tin Woodman's heart.
Steal the Scarecrow's brain.
Take the Lion's courage.
Then and only then—Dorothy must die!

Dorothy Must Die has been on my radar for a long time - but the real reason I got to it so quickly is because of something ridiculously simple - a girl at the book store. She told me that it was amazing, and that I just couldn't miss it - so the first chance I got, I cracked this bad boy open. And I haven't regretted it, since getting past the first two chapters.

I'm not going to lie about it, the first couple of chapters were really a drag. They were all about how Amy's life sucked, and how she was poor white trash, and I was THIS far from throwing the book away. But I kept reading, hoping that somehow we would get out of the real world and into Oz. And once we did, BAM! Everything was better. It was like the writing suddenly went "BOOM" and we were there. And the story got completely amazing. Because Oz is more twisted than I ever would have imagined.

Every single character that we've come to love from the movies? They've all become twisted and terrible versions of themselves, and you can't trust a single one of them. The scarecrow spends all of his time making terrible experiments in his lab, with the help of his new brains. The Cowardly Lion has become fierce, but by doing so he destroys everything. He eats people, and their fears. And then we have the Tinman, who is desperately in love with Dorothy, which eats up his heart from the inside and makes him a man without compassion. Dorothy herself? Well, she's just living the high life. The high and cruel life. Dorothy is greedy and cruel and full of herself.

They're essentially everything that we never imagined them to be, and it's pretty damn awesome. I liked all of the new characters that had been added to the story, and the way that none of them were without purpose. They were all well fleshed out, and it made for an interesting take. I also enjoyed Amy, once she got over her white trash kick and into Oz. She had a lot of spunk, and she was definitely fierce. But she was also compassionate and funny and even a little bit scared.

Interestingly enough, I didn't feel like any of the characters except Amy could be trusted. Everyone was working from their own motives, and that meant that nearly everyone was a suspect for anything.

The one disappointment that I had from Dorothy Must Die was the fact that it didn't have a fully resolved ending. Originally, I thought that it was a standalone, and while I'm excited to have a series to read, I enjoy standalones more, if you get my meaning. I would definitely recommend this one, though!