Boy, this novella did not work for me. As is probably evident from the title, it's a story about Miranda from The Tempest living in Milan after the end of the play. This should really be my jam, or at least interesting to me. But both the story and the writing didn't capture me, and I felt really disappointed by it. This is just something that happens with books sometimes, and it's a bummer!
Grade: C
A book club book! This is a fairly standard modern retelling/adaptation of a fairy tale, in this case Sleeping Beauty, in which the princess is a young woman named Zinnia who has a chronic, fatal illness. Her best friend sets up a birthday celebration for her that turns this into a portal fantasy, and she goes through a journey to potentially save both her life and the life of the princess she meets in that other universe.
I enjoyed this novella, but I think I wanted/hoped for a bit more - there's an interaction in the portal section of the story that almost but not quite knocked my socks off, and it made me think that the story had gotten a bit held back in order to make it fit a more standard narrative. Basically I thought that this story could have been much weirder and broken more of the narrative expectations, and it would have felt both more cohesive to me and more interesting. But it was still a fun read.
Grade: B
