What Once Was Mine by Liz Braswell

Desperate to save the life of their queen and her unborn child, the good people of Corona search for the all-healing Sundrop flower to cure her—but mistakenly acquire the shimmering Moondrop flower instead. Nonetheless it heals the queen, and she delivers a healthy baby girl with hair as silver and gray as the moon. With it comes dangerous magical powers: the power to hurt, not heal. For her safety and the safety of the kingdom, Rapunzel is locked in a tower and put under the care of powerful goodwife, Mother Gothel.

For eighteen years Rapunzel stays locked away, knowing she must protect others from her magical hair. But when she leaves the only home she's ever known, wanting only to see the floating lights that appear on her birthday, she gets caught up in an adventure across the kingdom with two thieves—a young woman named Gina, and Flynn Rider, a rogue on the run. Before she can reach her happy ending, Rapunzel learns that there may be more to her story, and her magical tresses, than she ever knew.

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Oh dear. What to say about this.

I love the idea of it, and of this whole series; rewrites of Disney properties, bringing in all the darkness that Disney can't always have in their movies. I've read a couple and enjoyed them. And I enjoyed the actual story of this one; it's clever, giving Rapunzel changing powers (although she didn't think of shrinking an injury when her power was making things smaller?) and I liked the characters. Although, as always, the instalove kicks in very hard, but at least Flynn was cute with it.

It's the framing story. Now, on its own it's not a bad idea; it's a cute way to set up that this is not the story we're expecting. But it keeps coming back, and back, and back, and basically all of them are the sister complaining about such and such a character not being in it yet and the brother assuring her that he has a plan. It's overused, which is a shame because it poisoned my feelings about the rest of the story, which were very positive.

The parts about Rapunzel are very clever, and very well written, and although I'm not sure why Gina was there she was at least an interesting, fun character. Mother Gothel was really creepy, far worse than in the actual movie, and there were some clever explanations for things that happened in the movie. I did enjoy this overall. I just can't recommend it fully, and that's a real shame, because I'd love to.

What Once Was Mine publishes on the 7th September 2021 in the US (top image) and on the 14th October 2021 in the UK (lower image). I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.