REVIEW: The Grimm Conclusion

By Denise @ Life With No Plot on July 25, 2024 • ( 1 )

About the Book

Title: The Grimm Conclusion

Author: Adam Gidwitz

Series: Grimm #3

Genre: Middle Grade, Fairy Tale Retellings

Pages: 368

Edition Read: Kindle eBook

Dates Read: June 23-28, 2024

Blurb: Widely praised and beloved by children, adults, and critics alike, Adam Gidwitz delivers a third serving of eerie new landscapes and fear-inducing creatures in a story sure to delight and frighten fans old and new. In the final book in the series, Adam’s brilliantly irreverent narrator leads readers through a fresh world of Grimm-inspired fairy tales, based on such classics as The Juniper Tree, the real story of Cinderella, and Rumpelstiltskin.

Review

I liked this book, but not as much as the first two.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still very good. It still has the same humor and still rips apart old stories to tell new ones. This time, our two main characters are Jorinda and Joringel, but there are quite a few other stories woven into it, like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. There are other fantasy/fairy tale elements included as well, such as tyrants, epic battles, and a trip to Hell. Honestly, Hell was my favorite part. Yes, that’s a strange sentence to say, but the Devil and his Grandmother were so fun to read and I would love if there was a spinoff series just about them and their daily hellish lives. It would be a hoot.

The main thing I didn’t like was towards the end of the book, where our main characters sort of . . . meet the author? And his classroom full of school children in our modern world? It definitely pulled me out of the story, and I know it was supposed to, but it felt really jarring to me and I didn’t care for it.

Like the second book, you don’t really need to read the other two to read this one, but it is probably better if you do. There are enough little hints and throwbacks to previous tales that it’s fun to see all the connections. This was a good book. I enjoyed it. I’m glad I read it. But I was also glad when it was over.

GoodReads rating: 3 stars