Review: Stitching Snow - R.C. Lewis

Stitching Snow
R.C. Lewis 
Series: N/A
Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Romance, Retelling, Dystopian
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
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Thanks to Disney-Hyperion for the eARC I received via Netgalley!

Stitching Snow was a very slow start for me. At the beginning of the story, Essie lives in a mining settlement where she cage fights for money and tinkers away at her robot friends in her spare time. Everything changes when a mysterious ship crashes near the settlement and she meets Dane, helping him to repair his ship. There's nothing inherently wrong with the beginning of the story; however, I felt as though too much emphasis was placed on Essie fixing things (stitching, as she calls it). So Essie stitched this bot, then Essie stitched the ship, then Essie stitched this other part of the ship, and so on. Meanwhile, I felt little to no attachment to any of these characters and I had no idea how this was a retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Fortunately, once the plot progresses past all this stitching, some more exciting and interesting plot things happen, bringing us to different places with different characters and a few things start to look like Snow White. There was still a lot of talk about stitching but she does a lot of stitching so it's not like it could be omitted entirely. At this point, I still really wanted more character development. In fact, up until about 80% through the book, I wasn't attached to the characters. One thing I really look for in a book is characters I care about so that definitely took away from my overall enjoyment. There were a lot of things happening to these characters throughout the entire book but a lot of their actions seemed rather flat an unmotivated.

With that being said, I did enjoy the last 20-25% of the book. Once I started caring about these characters and seeing a more interesting (in my opinion) plot unravel, I really started getting into it. Even though the characters were a bit mundane, I was invested in what they were doing and the outcome of the story.

R.C. Lewis clearly has potential and I think that her future work, based on the end of this book, could be really great and exciting. Unfortunately, with only about a quarter of this book being great, it earns 2.5 stars from me. The plot of Stitching Snow was interesting enough, with a very different twist on Snow White, but I wanted more in terms of character development. Overall, it was a decent story and I hope to see more from R.C. Lewis in the future.

- Kiersten

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