Customer Reviews

The Daughters Grimm

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In spite of her husband being a baron, the Grimm family matriarch is concerned with the prospects of her children as they lack funds. She pushes her oldest daughters to make a good match, which means title and wealth not love. However, every Tom, Dick and prince who comes by, all prefer blonde heiresses as none choose either Greta or Rae. Even the frogs they find dumped in their beds alas remains amphibians.

Their Prussian bully Aunt Vivian invites Rae and Greta to visit her at her barony Snowe Manor in the Black Forest, which they do. Rae meets a widowed Baron and his horde of children and Greta falls in love with an obnoxious Prince not charming. However, with their aunt acting amorally abhorrent, each sister still wonders if they found their fairy tale romance or are they going to end up like the ogress in a nightmarish fable.

The latest fractured fairy tale romance from Minda Webber Here (see THE REINVENTED MISS BLUEBIRD, THE REMARKABLE MISS FRANKENSTEIN and THE RELUCTANT MISS VAN HELSING) is an amusing historical. The story line is lighthearted fun with most of the amusement coming from Aunt Vivian. Fans of Ms. Webber will enjoy her latest jocular jaunt as THE DAUGHTERS GRIMM seek happily ever after.

Harriet Klausner

When Grimm sisters Greta and the beautiful, but extremely vain Rae, fail to find husbands in eighteenth-century Cornwall, Greta writes to her aunt in Prussia for help. Aunt Vivian delights in being able to be the one who finds suitable husbands for the girls and sends for them so that she can debut them in Prussian society. But Vivian isn't doing it to help the girls; she's merely doing it to irritate her sister by proving that the girls can easily find husbands with the right guidance.

In the middle of searching for the perfect husband Greta is drawn to the Black Forest to search out answers to all the paranormal oddities happening lately. There she hopes to find proof that vampires, witches, werewolves and other creatures of the night really do exist. When Rae meets a widowed Baron and Greta meets a handsome Prince you have to wonder if it'll be happily ever after or did the girls get themselves into a hairy situation?

I thought the book was cute and I loved all the pop culture references mixed with historical characters. The plot seemed to drag on just a little too much but I like how the story ended. I would recommend this book to paranormal romance readers like fans of MaryJanice Davidson's Queen Betsy series.

TOO MANY QUIPS SPOIL THE PLOT!!!!
This could have been an excellent 'read' but there were just too too many witticisms and overt attempts to be funny and clever at the same time. They overpowered a perfectly good story line that did not need all of them. If you compare this book to, for example, 'The Remarkable Miss Frankenstein' or 'The Reluctant Miss Van Helsing' it falls very short in quality.

Moreover, when an author uses real people in her stories, she should be correct historically, regardless of the type of book it is. For example,the book states that the composer Mozart did not like to hear the name Tschaikovsky, but since Mozart died in 1791 and Tshaikovsky was not born until 1840, I hardly think his name would have been mentioned by anyone at that time AND it was also stated at one point in the story that Mozart hated the music of Beethoven, but Beethoven was only 11 years old when Mozart died, so there would have been little or no music at this point for him to hear. It's things like this that cheapen a book, in my opinion.

BUT I did read all of it, and enjoyed it somewhat, but I kept thinking as the abundance or 'jokes' increased how much more I would have liked it if the plot was dominant! I hope the next one is 'quipless'.

Hmmm, how to describe "The Dughters Grimm"? I'm STILL laughing my a** off! Can I just say that Minda Webber apparently never met a fairy tale, spoonerism, sexual double entendre, or adage that she didn't like! They're ALL here, interlaced in a wacky romance about two sisters in the late 1700s looking for husbands (and creatures from lore). DON'T expect this book to be historically accurate. DON'T expect this book to have even one full chapter of seriousness. And DON'T expect not to enjoy the hilarious, crazy, and mixed-up antics of these two Daughters Grimm.

Rae is the beauty...and she sure knows it. For half of the book, she's not very likeable. But she is the poster child for blonde jokes everywhere! And her hero? Well, she doesn't get exactly what she thought she wanted, but she does get exactly what she needed to be happy.

Greta is the smart one. She's also the one who's dedicated to discovering the realities of things that go bump in the night. She's much more interested in her invesitgations than in finding a husband. So it's a good thing her future husband is happy to hunt for her!

Is this book silly? Yes. Is this book entertaining? Absolutely. Will you laugh? Without a doubt. This author's linguistic gymnastics will amuse and amaze you. Any author who can use all the language tricks and ancient tales while still turning out a very readable plot is a genius in my book. I LOVED it!

I am not going to write anything about the content of "The Daughters Grimm", that is for the reader to enjoy!! This book is an absolute jewel, from the first page to the last, it is will capture your imagination and make you wish you could live in the magical world of "The Black Forest"!!

Though beautiful and titled, the daughters of Baron Grimm face, well grim, prospects in the marriage department, since they are not wealthy. Their mother, however, is obsessed with getting her oldest two girls married well and hopefully, but not necessarily happily. Greta and Rae find themselves vying to catch the eyes of every baron, prince, duke, etcetera near and far. Yet, when their prince or barons do come, the days ahead seem to be ones that are anything but fairytale like, at least, not the Disney versions. They might look forward to as much joy as one of Anderson's tales, unless they can do something to break through to their less than joyful husbands' hearts.

*** Though less replete with hidden puns than her prior books, there is still a great deal of fun to be had here. Dual stories are well balanced as both Rae and Greta pursue their goals, matrimonial and otherwise. Most of the laughs come from their aunt, who would make an ideal wicked stepmother in any tale. ***

Amanda Killgore