A clean romantic retelling of The Nutcracker – it’s cute. I liked the evil mice the best. They are certainly worthy foes. There’s sword fights and trading insults, running to and fro, and deceit and trickery. I also liked the fairies and Mother Ginger. Everything in the parallel magical world smells like the best of Christmas – rich coffee, fresh cookies, etc. The author does a really good job of building that magical world known as WinterDream. Even the snowflakes are special.
Meanwhile, Clara must still spend her waking hours in the real world (St. Petersburg, Russia during the winter holidays). Her older sister is engaged and her parents are now considering a good match for her. However, she’s not keen on the man they have chosen. It’s a good thing her uncle has swung into town. He’s brought his assistant (Anton) and they have gifted her with a nutcracker doll to act as her protector. There’s a legendary story that her uncle tells her, about a nutcracker held under a curse.
Much of the time, Clara feels like a 15 year old instead of the 18 year old she is supposed to be. Clara is completely innocent when it comes to romance, so part of that is fitting. Yet there were times when Clara would say something and I couldn’t help but respond with, ‘that’s something a 12 year old would say.’. Clara doesn’t really come off as a young woman, especially with the pink silk dresses, sugary treats, and magical toys. It really does feel more like a kids tale much of the time. But then we have this romance and marriage in the making, so we need Clara to be a little older. Clara has no hobbies, no real ambitions. Her character has a lot of blanks and I wanted a bit more from her.
The pacing is pretty slow. There’s lots of flirtations or avoiding flirtations, glancing eyes, accidental touches, sighing, pittering hearts, etc. There’s only a few scenes with some real action (hence why I liked the rodents so much). Once the villains are defeated, the story goes back to it’s slow pace for the hour long wrap up. For me, I could have used some more action, a quicker pace.
All told, this tale is suitable for all ages being almost no blood, just a few deaths, and just a few kisses. 3.5/5 stars.
The Narration: Anne Marie Lewis was a great pick for Clara. She sounds like a young, innocent lady, just as Clara is written. Lewis also made an excellent angry evil rodent (woohoo!) and an evil witchy woman too. I also liked how she pulled off the Nutcracker’s wooden voice for the majority of the story. There’s a few Russian words and phrases in this story and they were decently done. With a little polishing, they would have been great. The pacing is good and there were no tech issues with the recording. 4.75/5 stars.
I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Chantal Gadoury. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.