Dorothy Must Die

Dorothy Must Die
author: Danielle Paige
published by: HarperCollins
released: April 1st 2014
pages: 452
my rating: 4 stars












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 bluebirds. 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 a yellow brick road - 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.

Everyone knows "The Wizard of Oz" and even though Amy Gumm, the main character in "Dorothy Must Die", goes through the main things Dorothy went through- being swept away by a tornado, following the yellow brick road- this book created a completely new Oz than the one we are all familiar with.
I read this as a buddy read and it was so much fun! Maybe that has an influence as to how I feel about this book, so consider yourselves warned.
Before everything else, I think it must be said, that I was in love with the Oz portrayed in Dorothy Must Die! I did not expect it to be as dark and gory as it was but it made the whole book so much cooler.

Amy Gumm was also way cooler than Dorothy in my opinion. She lives in a trailer and gets bullied. Her parents are divorced and her mother is an alcoholic and drug addict. Basically her life is pretty crappy. Also she goes through a lot of character development throughout this book, which makes her even more badass
When she lands in Oz she has to realize that Dorothy and her friends aren't the heroes anymore- they are the villains.
I wasn't really scared of Dorothy but she is so twisted and evil, you can't help but wonder how she ended up like this.
Her friends (The lion, the tin man and the lion) were way more creepy in my opinion. I was totally freaked out by them, especially by the scarecrow and exactly like Dorothy they were all a darker, more evil version of their selves in the "Wizard of Oz"

The book was very easy to read, it was fast paced and the writing wasn't too complicated. I felt like I flew through the chapters, even though with 452 pages, it is rather big.

Still I had a few problems with it.
First of all Amy excepted everything way too quickly. Her landing in Oz didn't seem to surprise her at all. She basically just thought: "I got transported to Oz by a tornado? That makes total sense!". See what I mean?
Also the ending was a bit anticlimactic, there was all that build up for an epic finale which wasn't all that epic in my opinion, but since it's the first book in a trilogy I'm hoping I'll get a great ending later on.

Overall the atmosphere in this book was great and makes me want to read on in the series. If you liked "The Wizard of Oz" you have to pick this up, as long as you can get over Dorothy being the bad guy. For everyone who hasn't read "The Wizard of Oz" : just read "Dorothy must Die" anyway.