iphi_kc13's review against another edition
2.0
I finally made it through. The conversations between characters were so stilted and hard to read. Tying in the three witches and Circe is really pushing my boundaries at this point too. I love the idea that the villains were victims and the spin out on these stories but this one was really hard to get through.
ariannarosereads's review against another edition
5.0
I liked this book a lot! Definitely a detailed explanation of Gothel’s backstory. Loved all the plot twists. Gothel lived her life obsessed with magic and her sisters. She grieved the loss of both and fought the rest of her life trying to rid herself of loneliness. Maybe if she moved on with her life, she could have found love again. She had many opportunities with the odd sisters, her caretaker Ms. T and Rapunzel. I always end up rooting for the villains; even though, I know they don’t have happy ends. I really wish they could change and find happiness!!
Gothel has two sisters Primrose and Hazel. They made a pact to be sister together forever! They live in an enchanted place where the dead live basically a cemetery. It’s called the Dead Wood’s and the three triplets’ mother, Manea is Queen of the Dead. Manea is upset her daughters aren’t identical triplets because they would be more powerful. Manea is basically a neglectful mother that has anger issues. When she does speak to her children, it is very harsh. The three girls spend their time together among the dead. Gothel is really the only sister that enjoys the dead woods and is curious in her mother’s magic. Gothel thinks mother is selfish by hording her magic and secrets because she won’t teach them. Manea eventually explains that they need her blood in order to rule and do magic. Once she teaches them and gives them her blood, she dies and goes with the ancestors to the mists. Manea also has lived several lifetimes which is the family tradition to use a flower called rapunzel to keep them healthy and youthful to carry out their many duties. One duty is Manea commanding the dead army. We witness her telling Jacob (the only living corpse that can speak)to go to the neighboring village to kill everyone except the children and one lady for not giving her their dead. Then if the lady won’t give him their dead he is to kill them all and collect their dead. We later see the dead children with their eyes covered with tar to help with their transition. Primrose and Hazel are terrified and disgusted by their mother’s actions. (I mean they live in the dead woods surrounded by dead, what did they think their mother did!?) Manea thinks they are weak and that only Gothel should get her powers. Gothel has a dark side and wants to rule in her mother’s place but she also wants to be with her sisters.
Gothel says she wants to take the blood to protect her sisters. Primrose threatens to leave if Gothel drinks their mother’s blood. Hazel mediates and explains to Primrose that it’s their duty and they all agree to drink their mother’s blood and rule together but a different way than their mother. Manea starts the blood ceremony. They all go into the conservatory and the girls see the golden flowers, Rapunzel for the first time, which have been in their family for generations. Manea tells Gothel privately that she wants her to take her place as queen, she is her favorite, and is a part of Manea herself that she could never hurt her. She warns her she needs to protect the Rapunzel flower. In the middle of the ceremony, Primrose starts screaming and crying because she sees the dead children from the village so her mother killed them after all and she doesn’t want anything from her. Manea forces her to take the blood, and throws Hazel for trying to interfere. Manea tells Gothel her sisters should die and Gothel should rule alone. Gothel gets pissed and wants to protect her sisters so she burns all the rapunzel flowers, except one causing her mother to turn to ash and die.
After their mother dies, Gothel awakens their mother’s most trust minion, Jacob. I honestly want more of a backstory on Jacob. Who was he? Why is he the only one that can talk? Did he have a romantic thing with Manea? Jacob tells Gothel that she must put her mom’s ashes to rest or she will haunt them for eternity and she needs to plant the Rapunzel flower or else it will die and they won’t live forever. He said there is a hidden vial of Manea’s blood that she left for Gothel and only gothel. Gothel decides to burry Manea’s ashes so she can be with their ancestors. Manea comes back as a black vortex to kill Primrose and hazel to punish gothel but gothel recites a spell and stops her mother. (How did she do that if she has no powers? She still hasn’t taken her mother’s blood.) During the attack, Manea destroys their home so Gothel has Jacob rebuild the house and make it homey for her sisters so they will want to stay.
Gothel’s sisters suddenly feel not like themselves and feel sick. The Odd Sisters pop in for a visit. Gothel wonders how they got through the thicket. The Odd Sisters came because they sensed Gothel’s magic and sadness. They said that Gothel needs them to help her save her sisters. In exchange for their help they want access to her mother’s spell books and to know what keeps them alive for so long. Jacob warns Gothel that she shouldn’t trust the odd sisters because Manea never did because she feared they wanted the rapunzel. Gothel ignores the warning and searches with the odd sisters for a way to save her sisters. Goethal believes her mother’s blood is the only way to save them, but that means they will be able to read her mind. She is scared they won’t love her when they realize she has a dark side. Her sister’s get even more ill so Gothel runs to get the vile of blood Jacob told her about. In the secret room on the vile is an incantation for the Rapunzel flower, Manea wrote a note saying this will help her sisters if they ever get ill. Excited that she finally knows how to save her sisters she runs upstairs to tell them (leaving the vile of blood in the unlocked room). She runs into the odd sisters, they tell Gothel that her sisters have died. Gothel is in shock so the odd sisters put her in a deep sleep so when she wakes she won’t be grieving.
Many years pass and Gothel is still under the sleeping spell. Jacob asks for help from the odd sisters to wake up Gothel. Instead of showing up because they are busy with Circe, they send Jacob instructions to wake her and they send Pflanze, their cat. Gothel wakes up to a whole new world. The little villages are now big kingdoms. All of a sudden the king of the nearby castle has somehow learned about the Rapunzel flower and how to get through the barrier. He and his army come into the dead woods to steal the flower for his very sick wife. Jacob tells Gothel she must leave the dead woods immediately without him and that he informed the odd sisters of what was happening there. He wants her to be safe. Gothel tries to stand but she is too weak from the sleeping spell to fight so they say their goodbyes. Gothel leaves knowing she will never see Jacob again.
During the siege, Jacob set up a cottage for Gothel to escape. The odd sisters were waiting for her where she and her dead sisters to arrive. She arrives still too weak to function after sleeping so long and woke up to an entirely new world. One without magic. The odd sisters told Gothel that all the rapunzel flowers have died except one. Plus her mother’s blood is missing from her belongings. Gothel lost everything. Her sisters died. The kingdom destroyed the dead woods and her childhood home looking for the Rapunzel. Even Jacob her loyal servant is gone forever.
Surprisingly, the odd sisters seem nice and not meddling so far. They seem to actually care for gothel. They call her sister. The odd sisters went out and got Gothel a caretaker, Ms. Tiddlebottom. They are wondering if she’ll share the rapunzel with them though.
As time went on, gothel had a mundane life. The odd sisters stopped visiting and Gothel became engulfed in loneliness, even though Mrs. T took care of her. She began to change. She started to despise the odd sisters and felt her life had no purpose. As the years went on, she aged with wrinkles and grey hair. She didn’t use the rapunzel. She wanted to die. Luckily the odd sisters popped in for a visit and told her to save herself and use the flower. She didn’t trust them. They explained that time works differently for them and they had to save their sister, Circe. While they were gone, they went back to the dead woods and found her mother’s blood!
Gothel took the blood but it didn’t work. She still wasn’t a witch. (I wonder if the odd sisters used it to help or create Circe and didn’t give her the real blood). Gothel is pissed and thinks the sisters betrayed her. They used her mother’s books to cast a spell to help Circe. They stole her rapunzel flower to try and help Maleficent. Gothel senses a change in the sisters. She feels they aren’t the same witches that she met in the dead woods as a girl, they are evil now. The sisters told Gothel she has her mother’s books, she could have found a way to save her sisters on her own.
Plot Twist: The odd sisters told Gothel that Circe died when Maleficent destroyed the fairylands and they brought her back to life!! They didn’t know creating Aurora would leave Maleficent with nothing but evil. They want to make their wrong doings right. Finally!! Before they could take the flower to her, Gothel found out and felt betrayed and called upon the dead to take their revenge. Her powers actually worked!? She stole the flower back but the odd sisters turned her army to dust then disappeared leaving in fear. (So did the blood actually work or are these the same powers she had in the dead woods when she stopped her mother)
Some villagers saw that the dead was raised so word started spreading throughout the kingdom that the queen of the dead lives in the cottage so when the queen got sick again due to her pregnancy, the king sent soldiers to search the cottage for the flower. Ms. Tiddlebottom is awesome! She tells Gothel to hide in the cellar and she’ll handle the guards. The guards ended up taking the flower and thought Ms. Tiddlebottom was so sweet that she couldn’t be the queen of the dead. Goethel is pissed. She has nothing now. She wants to steal the flower back. She leaves for a long time and returns with a baby. Gothel shows Ms. T her “flower” and Ms. T says your flowers looks awfully a lot like a baby. Gothel said that’s because the queen ate the flower instead of singing to it. So the baby is her flower now. They hire Ms. Pickle to take care of the baby, which Gothel named Rapunzel. Gothel was never a real mother to Rapunzel she only saw her once a day to sing to her while she brushed her hair to make her young again. She was raised by Ms T and Ms pickle.
On Rapunzel‘s eighth birthday, Gothel invited the odd sisters and they gave her a chameleon named Pascal. Rapunzel goes missing so Ms. T and Ms. Pickle go looking for her. They decide to go down to the cellar, which they were told never to go. They see all four witches in the middle of a spell with their hands clasped together with blood dipping on a sleeping Rapunzel on the floor surrounded by two dead ladies in coffins. They scream and break spell. Gothel is pissed they ruined the spell to bring her sisters back to life. The odd sisters kill Pickle and take Tiddlebottom to her room and wipe her memory of Rapunzel. They all decide to keep Rapunzel under a sleeping spell and the odd sisters let her dream. They created a tower that she can paint and spend her days in. They created Gothel as her loving and devoted mother. (The song when will my life begin is Rapunzel in her dream world going about her daily life stuck in a spell).
Gothel doesn’t think Rapunzel is safe in the village anymore and wants to hide her flower away. She puts her sleeping body in a hidden tower. Gothel still wants to revive her sisters but has to wait for Rapunzel’s hair to get longer so she can wrap the hair around them. When Rapunzel’s hair got long enough, she reaches out to the odd sisters to help her bring her sisters back. The odd sisters cannot help Gothel because they have been sent to a dreamscape because of a curse. Years go by and still trapped in the dreamscape, the odd sisters have compelled Flynn Rider to steal the royal crown and to go find Rapunzel. Around this time Gothel leaves the tower to go get a sleeping potion so she can put Rapunzel to sleep while she tries to revive her sisters. Rapunzel’s hair is now long enough to try it on her own without the odd sisters.
On the way back to the tower, the odd sisters appeared in the mirror and told Gothel that Rapunzel is awake and she thinks today is a typical day and she is waiting for her loving mother. (This is what we see in the Tangeled movie). Gothel tries to put on a loving show but fails. Rapunzel asks to see the floating lanterns but Gothel gets mad. Rapunzel asks for paints instead and Gothel agrees so she can take time to see how her sisters are holding up in the coffin and prepare them for when she wakes them.
Plot Twist: Halfway to the cottage, the odd sisters appear in the mirror and tell Gothel that Manea created her with magic! Her sisters aren’t even her real sisters. Jacob under Manea’s instruction took them from nearby villages just to entertain Gothel. Gothel is trying to be a mother to Rapunzel just like her own mother tried but they both are selfish and cruel.
The odd sister said gothel chose the wrong sisters. She should’ve chose them instead of Primrose and Hazel. They are at least bonded by which magic. We find out the odd sisters gave the counter enchantment to the king so his guards could get through the thicket. (Kind of figured they did, those meddling witches.)They wanted gothel to leave the deadwood and be closer to them but instead Gothel turned on them and grieved for her dead sisters. We also learn that the odd sisters gave the king and queen the idea of lighting the lanterns on Rapunzel’s birthday.
Cerci appears in the mirror of the dream world and orders her sisters to stop meddling with Gothel and Rapunzel. She says every time they try to help someone things go terribly wrong. Cerci was going to help Rapunzel with the help of the fairies. Lucinda sees this as a betrayal. She thinks Circe belongs to the fairies now and proclaims Circe is the enemy she wants to destroy everything she holds dear thinking this will bring her back to them. (Clearly they are lost and delusional.)
I wonder if she explained to Rapunzel about her sisters situation if she would’ve helped her? Then again Gothel only saw Rapunzel as an object and not a person so she would’ve had to respect her decision. Which I think Gothel treated people this way her whole life. She saw people as a way to get what she wants. She tried to manipulate and guilt trip the odd sisters to doing things for or with her. She only used her sisters Primrose and Hazel as companions but never wanted them to think of things on their own. She wanted everything to be her way. Gothel was even trying to bring them back for selfish reasons (she was lonely). Her sisters literally told her to let them die and stay dead. She should really respect their wishes and move on.
The movie Tangeled plays out. Gothel stabs Eugene in the tower and was taking Rapunzel back to the cottage to revive her sisters. Eugene cuts Rapunzels hair causing Gothel to turn to ash and die just like her mother did. (She said it was very painful. I hope someone buries her ashes so she can live with the ancestors.) Circe saw that Gothel killed Eugene. So she sang the flower song in the mirror that caused a little bit of magic left in Rapunzel to revive Eugene. Snow White and Circe went to watch Rapunzel meet her family. Circe admitted to snow that she’s not the real Circe.
I wonder what Circe will do with Gothel’s sisters left in the cottage after her demise. Circe is still learning about herself and she is determined to read her sisters’ journals from the dead woods.
I’m left wondering why Manea’s blood didn’t work? (But she still commanded the dead that one time with the odd sisters which was odd) If she went back to the dead woods would she have been Queen?
The whole book basically was if she would’ve done things sooner or differently it would’ve turned out better. Like if she would’ve looked or even taken her mothers blood sooner and not waited she would’ve saw that the rapunzel flowers could’ve healed her sisters before they died. Then she was put in a coma basically by the odd sisters for probably hundreds of years and when she woke up everything was destroyed. If the odd sister’s haven’t put her under a spell and she dealt with her grief and took the blood, she could have helped her sisters and everything would’ve been fine but instead everything was destroyed. The odd sisters sleeping spell and Gothel’s lack of initiative led to her falling.
Gothel has two sisters Primrose and Hazel. They made a pact to be sister together forever! They live in an enchanted place where the dead live basically a cemetery. It’s called the Dead Wood’s and the three triplets’ mother, Manea is Queen of the Dead. Manea is upset her daughters aren’t identical triplets because they would be more powerful. Manea is basically a neglectful mother that has anger issues. When she does speak to her children, it is very harsh. The three girls spend their time together among the dead. Gothel is really the only sister that enjoys the dead woods and is curious in her mother’s magic. Gothel thinks mother is selfish by hording her magic and secrets because she won’t teach them. Manea eventually explains that they need her blood in order to rule and do magic. Once she teaches them and gives them her blood, she dies and goes with the ancestors to the mists. Manea also has lived several lifetimes which is the family tradition to use a flower called rapunzel to keep them healthy and youthful to carry out their many duties. One duty is Manea commanding the dead army. We witness her telling Jacob (the only living corpse that can speak)to go to the neighboring village to kill everyone except the children and one lady for not giving her their dead. Then if the lady won’t give him their dead he is to kill them all and collect their dead. We later see the dead children with their eyes covered with tar to help with their transition. Primrose and Hazel are terrified and disgusted by their mother’s actions. (I mean they live in the dead woods surrounded by dead, what did they think their mother did!?) Manea thinks they are weak and that only Gothel should get her powers. Gothel has a dark side and wants to rule in her mother’s place but she also wants to be with her sisters.
Gothel says she wants to take the blood to protect her sisters. Primrose threatens to leave if Gothel drinks their mother’s blood. Hazel mediates and explains to Primrose that it’s their duty and they all agree to drink their mother’s blood and rule together but a different way than their mother. Manea starts the blood ceremony. They all go into the conservatory and the girls see the golden flowers, Rapunzel for the first time, which have been in their family for generations. Manea tells Gothel privately that she wants her to take her place as queen, she is her favorite, and is a part of Manea herself that she could never hurt her. She warns her she needs to protect the Rapunzel flower. In the middle of the ceremony, Primrose starts screaming and crying because she sees the dead children from the village so her mother killed them after all and she doesn’t want anything from her. Manea forces her to take the blood, and throws Hazel for trying to interfere. Manea tells Gothel her sisters should die and Gothel should rule alone. Gothel gets pissed and wants to protect her sisters so she burns all the rapunzel flowers, except one causing her mother to turn to ash and die.
After their mother dies, Gothel awakens their mother’s most trust minion, Jacob. I honestly want more of a backstory on Jacob. Who was he? Why is he the only one that can talk? Did he have a romantic thing with Manea? Jacob tells Gothel that she must put her mom’s ashes to rest or she will haunt them for eternity and she needs to plant the Rapunzel flower or else it will die and they won’t live forever. He said there is a hidden vial of Manea’s blood that she left for Gothel and only gothel. Gothel decides to burry Manea’s ashes so she can be with their ancestors. Manea comes back as a black vortex to kill Primrose and hazel to punish gothel but gothel recites a spell and stops her mother. (How did she do that if she has no powers? She still hasn’t taken her mother’s blood.) During the attack, Manea destroys their home so Gothel has Jacob rebuild the house and make it homey for her sisters so they will want to stay.
Gothel’s sisters suddenly feel not like themselves and feel sick. The Odd Sisters pop in for a visit. Gothel wonders how they got through the thicket. The Odd Sisters came because they sensed Gothel’s magic and sadness. They said that Gothel needs them to help her save her sisters. In exchange for their help they want access to her mother’s spell books and to know what keeps them alive for so long. Jacob warns Gothel that she shouldn’t trust the odd sisters because Manea never did because she feared they wanted the rapunzel. Gothel ignores the warning and searches with the odd sisters for a way to save her sisters. Goethal believes her mother’s blood is the only way to save them, but that means they will be able to read her mind. She is scared they won’t love her when they realize she has a dark side. Her sister’s get even more ill so Gothel runs to get the vile of blood Jacob told her about. In the secret room on the vile is an incantation for the Rapunzel flower, Manea wrote a note saying this will help her sisters if they ever get ill. Excited that she finally knows how to save her sisters she runs upstairs to tell them (leaving the vile of blood in the unlocked room). She runs into the odd sisters, they tell Gothel that her sisters have died. Gothel is in shock so the odd sisters put her in a deep sleep so when she wakes she won’t be grieving.
Many years pass and Gothel is still under the sleeping spell. Jacob asks for help from the odd sisters to wake up Gothel. Instead of showing up because they are busy with Circe, they send Jacob instructions to wake her and they send Pflanze, their cat. Gothel wakes up to a whole new world. The little villages are now big kingdoms. All of a sudden the king of the nearby castle has somehow learned about the Rapunzel flower and how to get through the barrier. He and his army come into the dead woods to steal the flower for his very sick wife. Jacob tells Gothel she must leave the dead woods immediately without him and that he informed the odd sisters of what was happening there. He wants her to be safe. Gothel tries to stand but she is too weak from the sleeping spell to fight so they say their goodbyes. Gothel leaves knowing she will never see Jacob again.
During the siege, Jacob set up a cottage for Gothel to escape. The odd sisters were waiting for her where she and her dead sisters to arrive. She arrives still too weak to function after sleeping so long and woke up to an entirely new world. One without magic. The odd sisters told Gothel that all the rapunzel flowers have died except one. Plus her mother’s blood is missing from her belongings. Gothel lost everything. Her sisters died. The kingdom destroyed the dead woods and her childhood home looking for the Rapunzel. Even Jacob her loyal servant is gone forever.
Surprisingly, the odd sisters seem nice and not meddling so far. They seem to actually care for gothel. They call her sister. The odd sisters went out and got Gothel a caretaker, Ms. Tiddlebottom. They are wondering if she’ll share the rapunzel with them though.
As time went on, gothel had a mundane life. The odd sisters stopped visiting and Gothel became engulfed in loneliness, even though Mrs. T took care of her. She began to change. She started to despise the odd sisters and felt her life had no purpose. As the years went on, she aged with wrinkles and grey hair. She didn’t use the rapunzel. She wanted to die. Luckily the odd sisters popped in for a visit and told her to save herself and use the flower. She didn’t trust them. They explained that time works differently for them and they had to save their sister, Circe. While they were gone, they went back to the dead woods and found her mother’s blood!
Gothel took the blood but it didn’t work. She still wasn’t a witch. (I wonder if the odd sisters used it to help or create Circe and didn’t give her the real blood). Gothel is pissed and thinks the sisters betrayed her. They used her mother’s books to cast a spell to help Circe. They stole her rapunzel flower to try and help Maleficent. Gothel senses a change in the sisters. She feels they aren’t the same witches that she met in the dead woods as a girl, they are evil now. The sisters told Gothel she has her mother’s books, she could have found a way to save her sisters on her own.
Plot Twist: The odd sisters told Gothel that Circe died when Maleficent destroyed the fairylands and they brought her back to life!! They didn’t know creating Aurora would leave Maleficent with nothing but evil. They want to make their wrong doings right. Finally!! Before they could take the flower to her, Gothel found out and felt betrayed and called upon the dead to take their revenge. Her powers actually worked!? She stole the flower back but the odd sisters turned her army to dust then disappeared leaving in fear. (So did the blood actually work or are these the same powers she had in the dead woods when she stopped her mother)
Some villagers saw that the dead was raised so word started spreading throughout the kingdom that the queen of the dead lives in the cottage so when the queen got sick again due to her pregnancy, the king sent soldiers to search the cottage for the flower. Ms. Tiddlebottom is awesome! She tells Gothel to hide in the cellar and she’ll handle the guards. The guards ended up taking the flower and thought Ms. Tiddlebottom was so sweet that she couldn’t be the queen of the dead. Goethel is pissed. She has nothing now. She wants to steal the flower back. She leaves for a long time and returns with a baby. Gothel shows Ms. T her “flower” and Ms. T says your flowers looks awfully a lot like a baby. Gothel said that’s because the queen ate the flower instead of singing to it. So the baby is her flower now. They hire Ms. Pickle to take care of the baby, which Gothel named Rapunzel. Gothel was never a real mother to Rapunzel she only saw her once a day to sing to her while she brushed her hair to make her young again. She was raised by Ms T and Ms pickle.
On Rapunzel‘s eighth birthday, Gothel invited the odd sisters and they gave her a chameleon named Pascal. Rapunzel goes missing so Ms. T and Ms. Pickle go looking for her. They decide to go down to the cellar, which they were told never to go. They see all four witches in the middle of a spell with their hands clasped together with blood dipping on a sleeping Rapunzel on the floor surrounded by two dead ladies in coffins. They scream and break spell. Gothel is pissed they ruined the spell to bring her sisters back to life. The odd sisters kill Pickle and take Tiddlebottom to her room and wipe her memory of Rapunzel. They all decide to keep Rapunzel under a sleeping spell and the odd sisters let her dream. They created a tower that she can paint and spend her days in. They created Gothel as her loving and devoted mother. (The song when will my life begin is Rapunzel in her dream world going about her daily life stuck in a spell).
Gothel doesn’t think Rapunzel is safe in the village anymore and wants to hide her flower away. She puts her sleeping body in a hidden tower. Gothel still wants to revive her sisters but has to wait for Rapunzel’s hair to get longer so she can wrap the hair around them. When Rapunzel’s hair got long enough, she reaches out to the odd sisters to help her bring her sisters back. The odd sisters cannot help Gothel because they have been sent to a dreamscape because of a curse. Years go by and still trapped in the dreamscape, the odd sisters have compelled Flynn Rider to steal the royal crown and to go find Rapunzel. Around this time Gothel leaves the tower to go get a sleeping potion so she can put Rapunzel to sleep while she tries to revive her sisters. Rapunzel’s hair is now long enough to try it on her own without the odd sisters.
On the way back to the tower, the odd sisters appeared in the mirror and told Gothel that Rapunzel is awake and she thinks today is a typical day and she is waiting for her loving mother. (This is what we see in the Tangeled movie). Gothel tries to put on a loving show but fails. Rapunzel asks to see the floating lanterns but Gothel gets mad. Rapunzel asks for paints instead and Gothel agrees so she can take time to see how her sisters are holding up in the coffin and prepare them for when she wakes them.
Plot Twist: Halfway to the cottage, the odd sisters appear in the mirror and tell Gothel that Manea created her with magic! Her sisters aren’t even her real sisters. Jacob under Manea’s instruction took them from nearby villages just to entertain Gothel. Gothel is trying to be a mother to Rapunzel just like her own mother tried but they both are selfish and cruel.
The odd sister said gothel chose the wrong sisters. She should’ve chose them instead of Primrose and Hazel. They are at least bonded by which magic. We find out the odd sisters gave the counter enchantment to the king so his guards could get through the thicket. (Kind of figured they did, those meddling witches.)They wanted gothel to leave the deadwood and be closer to them but instead Gothel turned on them and grieved for her dead sisters. We also learn that the odd sisters gave the king and queen the idea of lighting the lanterns on Rapunzel’s birthday.
Cerci appears in the mirror of the dream world and orders her sisters to stop meddling with Gothel and Rapunzel. She says every time they try to help someone things go terribly wrong. Cerci was going to help Rapunzel with the help of the fairies. Lucinda sees this as a betrayal. She thinks Circe belongs to the fairies now and proclaims Circe is the enemy she wants to destroy everything she holds dear thinking this will bring her back to them. (Clearly they are lost and delusional.)
I wonder if she explained to Rapunzel about her sisters situation if she would’ve helped her? Then again Gothel only saw Rapunzel as an object and not a person so she would’ve had to respect her decision. Which I think Gothel treated people this way her whole life. She saw people as a way to get what she wants. She tried to manipulate and guilt trip the odd sisters to doing things for or with her. She only used her sisters Primrose and Hazel as companions but never wanted them to think of things on their own. She wanted everything to be her way. Gothel was even trying to bring them back for selfish reasons (she was lonely). Her sisters literally told her to let them die and stay dead. She should really respect their wishes and move on.
The movie Tangeled plays out. Gothel stabs Eugene in the tower and was taking Rapunzel back to the cottage to revive her sisters. Eugene cuts Rapunzels hair causing Gothel to turn to ash and die just like her mother did. (She said it was very painful. I hope someone buries her ashes so she can live with the ancestors.) Circe saw that Gothel killed Eugene. So she sang the flower song in the mirror that caused a little bit of magic left in Rapunzel to revive Eugene. Snow White and Circe went to watch Rapunzel meet her family. Circe admitted to snow that she’s not the real Circe.
I wonder what Circe will do with Gothel’s sisters left in the cottage after her demise. Circe is still learning about herself and she is determined to read her sisters’ journals from the dead woods.
I’m left wondering why Manea’s blood didn’t work? (But she still commanded the dead that one time with the odd sisters which was odd) If she went back to the dead woods would she have been Queen?
The whole book basically was if she would’ve done things sooner or differently it would’ve turned out better. Like if she would’ve looked or even taken her mothers blood sooner and not waited she would’ve saw that the rapunzel flowers could’ve healed her sisters before they died. Then she was put in a coma basically by the odd sisters for probably hundreds of years and when she woke up everything was destroyed. If the odd sister’s haven’t put her under a spell and she dealt with her grief and took the blood, she could have helped her sisters and everything would’ve been fine but instead everything was destroyed. The odd sisters sleeping spell and Gothel’s lack of initiative led to her falling.
elodiethefangirl's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
skyesbookishlife's review against another edition
dark
emotional
fast-paced
5.0
Wow! As a fan of Tangled is ABSOLUTELY LOVED this backstory of Gothel and the flower, how it all tied into the main plot story of this series and the little twists within the story were perfectly told! After every book in this series I'm so much more excited to keep going!! Highly recommend picking up this series if you haven't yet!
sarah_roundtree's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
kaylaannsreads's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
ivywitch's review against another edition
dark
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
marala_97's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0