Stealing Snow by Danielle Paige

Seventeen-year-old Snow has spent the majority of her life within the walls of the Whittaker Institute, a high-security mental hospital in upstate New York. Deep down she knows she's not crazy and doesn't belong there. When she meets a mysterious, handsome new orderly and dreams about a strange twisted tree, she realizes she must escape and figure out who she really is.

Using her trusting friend, Bale, as a distraction, Snow breaks free and races into the nearby woods. Suddenly everything isn't what it seems, the line between reality and fantasy begins to blur, and she finds herself in icy Algid - her true home - with witches, thieves, and a strangely alluring boy named Kai, none of whom she's sure she can trust. As secret after secret is revealed, Snow discovers that she is on the run from a royal lineage she's destined to inherit, a father more powerful and ruthless than she could have imagined, and choices of the heart that could change the fate of everything...including Snow's return to the world she once knew.

This breathtaking first volume begins the story of how Snow becomes a villain, a queen, and ultimately a hero.

Series: Stealing Snow  #1| Publisher: Audible Studios | Narrator: Bailey Carr  | Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins | Genre: Fantasy | Source: Publisher | Ratings: DNF

So, Stealing Snow, *shudders*. This became my first DNF of 2017. I tried, I really tried to finish this one but it just wasn’t going to happen.

 

I knew, going in, that this was a YA fantasy book, but I had heard so many reviewers raving about how it was more adult than YA, I have to say, it’s nowhere near adult. Snow is a whiney, woe-is-me teenager from the start and it only gets worse as the book progresses. I couldn’t find one thing that I liked about her and her obsession with Bale, the boy she supposedly fell in love with at the mental institution, became annoying. And, like a teen, Snow fell for every guy she came in contact with and soon threw herself into a love triangle.  *cue eye roll*

 

The world building sort of left me scratching my head. In the beginning, when Snow arrived in Algid, it was great and I really got an amazing picture of this fantasy world with its snow beast, river witches, and fantastical creatures then a new chapter started and the world building evaporated and never really returned.

 

It felt like this book went on forever but the plot went nowhere. I kept waiting for something to happen but nothing really did. It was the same thing over and over again just in a different location. Nothing evolved and I just couldn’t take Snow whining one more minute.

Okay, so the narrator was like nails down a chalkboard. Her narration of Snow was breathy and urgent while her narration of others was shrill.

 

Overall, I just couldn’t force myself to finish this one.