Dorothy Must Die: Volume 1

Danielle Paige

Apr 2014 · Dorothy Must Die Book 1 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

The New York Times bestselling first book in a dark series that reimagines the Oz saga, from debut author Danielle Paige. Start at the beginning and discover your new series to binge!

My name is Amy Gumm—and I'm the other girl from Kansas. I've been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked. I've been trained to fight. And I have a mission: Remove the Tin Woodman's heart. Steal the Scarecrow's brain. Take the Lion's courage. And—Dorothy must die.

I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't ask to be some kind of hero. But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado—taking you with it—you have no choice but to go along, you know?

Sure, I've read the books. I've seen the movies. I know the song about the rainbow and the happy little blue birds. But I never expected Oz to look like this. To be a place where Good Witches can't be trusted, Wicked Witches may just be the good guys, and winged monkeys can be executed for acts of rebellion. There's still a road of yellow brick—but even that's crumbling.

What happened? Dorothy. They say she found a way to come back to Oz. They say she seized power and the power went to her head. And now no one is safe.

Ratings and reviews

I went into this expecting a dark, twisted take on Dorothy's tale. What I got feels like an excuse for a love story. I stopped less than halfway in. Couldnt do it. The prequel misled me. From a munchkin wearing goth clothes with tattoos to suspicious pretty, young boys in high places... The book feels like a teenager's dream. The teenager in me couldn't stop gagging and rolling her eyes. The ratio of actual dark occurrences to unbearably cheesy dialogue is won out by the latter. I don't have the patience.

I was really excited about this book. Revisiting Oz, the new relatable heroine, the fall of the goody-two-shoes Dorothy. Unfortunately, the writer gets to caught up in character development. By page 93 she is still being vague about Amy's mission and why she is there. There is suspense, then there is dragging it out. I wish she would have trusted the readers to be smart enough to infer how scared Amy was without having to write every thought and feeling that popped into her head. Slow until ch. 27.

Be better if it hadn't been written in first person. That drives me nuts in a story. Also the ending. The back cover makes it out that something is completely obvious throughout the story when in actuality it's basically what the girl is told on the last pages. There's no resolution at all in this book. The majority of the writing is stuff that is painfully obvious filler space, and when it starts to get good and you think something is going to happen, it doesn't. Disappointment really.

About the author

Danielle Paige is a graduate of Columbia University and the author of the New York Times bestselling Dorothy Must Die series. Before turning to young adult literature, she worked in the television industry, where she received a Writers Guild of America Award and was nominated for several Daytime Emmys. She currently lives in New York City.