The Enchanted Sonata

This Nutcracker retelling should be made into a movie! I love how Heather writes magic, humour, romance. You can't help but grow fond of all the different characters and feel yourself getting pulled into the story. Now waiting for the next book in this hopefully to be trilogy!

O livro em si é um encanto, maravilhoso! Porém é uma pena que a Amazon tenha enviado o produto com capa manchada e mesmo os avisando, nada me responderam.

Instantly became one of my favorite books! A beautiful fairy tale about courage and the purpose in life

So I notice that a lot of the reviewers here got this book for free, through some program, in exchange for their “honest review.” Which is fine. But it means that for many of the reviewers, this is not a book they would normally seek out to read. It’s not their cup of tea, so to speak. It’s something that was dropped in their laps, and they read it more as a task, to get the review done. And that’s reflected in the responses some of them gave. (And some even think they’re giving constructive criticism about the book’s writing, which makes me cringe.)I did seek out this book, and I spent money on it, because I enjoyed the author’s previous two books. I found the characters likable and relatable, the worldbuilding interesting, and the story charming. If your cup of tea is a serving of angstiness seasoned with “complex” (read: morally ambiguous) characters and edgy, revisionist narratives, this book may not fit your palate. If, on the other hand, you sometimes fill your teacup with more classic fairy tale fare, and are not offended by non-cynical approaches to magic, family, and romance, this book might fit the bill. Also, there are fights with giant rats.For me, it’s late November, there’s mist over the pine mountains on the horizon, Tchaikovsky is playing in lossless format on the stereo, I’ve got peppermint in my coffee, my wife is snuggled up with me on the couch, and, right now, this is exactly my cup of tea.

This was the cutest, sweetest story! I enjoy the Nutcracker ballet, but felt meh about Disney's movie retelling, so I was slightly nervous I'd end up feeling the same about this book. But all of my reader friends whose opinions I trust the most and whose tastes are similar to mine loved it, so I needn't have worried. This story was totally unique from the Disney retelling and even the ballet (while holding on to essential elements from the ballet) and I adored what the author did with it. A brave, 8 ft nutcracker with a great sense of humor, wolf and bear-sized rats, fighting battles with peppermints, music being actually magic, and a young heroine who's sweet, brave, and talented, but imperfect enough to be relatable. What more could you possibly want? Oh, yes, you might also want a cross-over retelling of the Pied Piper, and this has that, too!How do I even express how much I enjoyed it? I read at a pace much faster than is normal for me because I HAD to know what happened. I loved that Clara broke from the mold of stereotypical kick-butt heroines with her kindness and sweetness, but was still brave. Clara was also imperfect, which meant she was able to learn a lesson and grow as a person, and I loved that, too. Nutcracker's sense of humor made me laugh out loud several times, and the romance (which didn't completely overwhelm the adventure of the story, I will happily add!) was so stinking cute!I even liked what was done with the villain and that he had a reason for what he did, twisted though that reason was, and actually had some things in common with the Nutcracker so you could see how they could easily become similar people if Nutcracker had made the same choices. The side characters also had their own personalities and things going on with them, and I enjoyed seeing their stories resolved as well. And somehow, the author managed to integrate a Pied Piper retelling into the Nutcracker retelling in such a way that it made perfect sense for the story world and the story as a whole. I'm not even a huge fan of the original Pied Piper, but I loved what she did with that element, too.What more can I say except that I want all of my bookish friends to treat themselves and read this fun book! This will definitely be a story I read at Christmastime over and over for many years to come.