Anyone who follows my blog knows I am a big fan of Melanie Dickerson! I take great pride in owning every one of her books and I absolutely love talking and discussing them with bookish friends. They have everything! Romance, adventure, great biblical aspects, and I especially love her fairy tale retelling “Hagenheim” series.
Every book of Miss Dickerson’s I’ve read so far has such complex characters. The Golden Braid was no different. Rapunzel and Gerek both have fascinating back stories that I liked seeing unfold. By the end of the book, all of the characters had gone through so much development! It was fantastic, and I adored Rapunzel.
I also loved seeing previous book characters again in this one! I like how in every one of the Hagenheim books, old characters are back for a small peek at how their lives are going and what they turned out like sometime later. They all end up connecting in some way and that’s a really cool aspect of this series.
Rapunzel is one of my favorite fairy tales, so I was thrilled to be getting my hands on Melanie Dickerson’s newest retelling. I’ll read just about any Rapunzel retelling just because she’s Rapunzel, and if Melanie Dickerson is writing it? There was no way I wanted to miss out on it. That said? The Golden Braid definitely isn’t my favorite of these books. (In case you’re wondering, my favorite so far is The Fairest Beauty, the Snow White retelling.)
I had a hard time getting into it. It was a little slow for my taste at the beginning, and I just couldn’t seem to get into Rapunzel’s head very well. I really wasn’t very excited about the book until about 2/3 of the way. That was disappointing, because I had such high hopes for it!
What kept my going was Melanie Dickerson’s writing style. She also does such a wonderful job of capturing what it was really like to live in the medieval time period. Since I don’t read a lot of books in that time, I enjoy seeing that in her books. The detail is definitely something I enjoyed. 🙂
Mainly because I had a hard time becoming interested in the story, I am giving The Golden Braid 3/5 stars.
sound like something you’d read? have you read any of melanie dickerson’s books before? i can’t wait to hear what you all think of this book & melanie dickerson’s series!
