Yule WitchaThon 2018: Book I received as a gift

What an amazingly bizarre and beautiful book! I put off reading this for over two years because I thought that this would be so weird that it would take me out of the book. I was so wrong and I'm kicking myself for waiting so long! Vassa in the Night is a modern retelling of the Russian fairytale Vasilisa the Beautiful, a story about a beautiful girl who is forced to deal with a witch by her cruel stepmother and stepsisters after her mother dies and her father leaves. I read a synopsis of the original fairy tale before going into this and it helped a lot because the plot would've come across as batsh*t nuts otherwise. Porter sets her story in a fantastical version of Brooklyn that has been experiencing prolonged and miserable nights. Vassa, our sarcastic and quirky heroine, is forced by her stepsister to buy lightbulbs from BY's, a deadly version of Walmart owned by Babs, a weird old lady who likes to behead pickpockets and thieves and displays their dismembered heads on spike outside her store. On paper, it sounds nuts, and it is, but Vassa's commentary and the ethereal quality of writing just makes it work (read the first chapter about Night and you'll get what I mean). On top of the fantastic writing, the story is also unapologetically dark and sinister. I was frequently shocked by some of things that happened in the book and how bloody the story became.

When it comes down to it, Porter was able to masterfully recreate the darkness and the fantastical whimsy of the original fairy tale. It just made my reading experience more fulfilling and satisfying and I wish all fairy tale retellings could match the energy and craftsmanship of this book. I'm definitely going to look at more of Porter's books.

Really cool/creepy retelling of an unfamiliar (at least to me) folk tale. I was left with a lot of questions, but really enjoyed the story overall.

Check out my full review on Forever Young Adult.

A red hot mess of a 'reinterpretation' which tries for style over substance, and achieves neither.

I'm having a really hard time with this book. I think I might have to give up and admit that I didn't like it, and spending a month struggling through it felt like a waste of time. I really, really wanted to enjoy this. Ugh.

This was the weirdest book I've ever read. I'm curious to know if all Russian fairy tales (this story was based on one) are this unusual.

What the heck was this?
Points for gorgeous writing and an original fantasy / magical realism, but minus for being a bit too off the walls.

Possibly one of the weirdest books I've ever read! While I didn't love it, I didn't completely hate it either . . . It was just okay.

What a breath of fresh air! In a sea of Young Adult fairytale retellings, Sarah Porter's use of Vasilisa the Beautiful stands apart and above. I really appreciated how true this story stayed to the original tale in its modern setting or as true as you can stay to tales passed down through oral tradition. Vassa, Erg, Night, Dex, and the swans are all incredible characters with distinct personalities. Porter does an amazing job of giving these characters lovable, quirky personalities that stand out even against a backdrop so vivid as this setting. The feeling of a Slavic folktale shines through even though this is a story clearly aimed at a younger audience. I loved every breathtaking second of it. The only portion of the story I had an issue with was Tomin. I felt like he attached to Vassa far too quickly, and she did not seem to reciprocate. I actually liked that she didn't reciprocate because that would have felt like insta-love. I feel like Tomin could've been taken out of the story entirely and replaced with her step-sister even, and nothing about the story would have changed. Although, I suppose he almost functions as an Ivan Tsarevich-type figure for this story. Overall, I really enjoyed Vassa in the Night and recommend it to anyone looking to mix up their fairytale retellings!

3.5ish. It was slow in places and a bit confusing. But in the last 100 pages things really started to happen and it became more interesting and engaging. I wish I had known more about the Vassalissa story before reading.

This retelling of the Russian fairy tale 'Vassilisa the Beautiful' started strong, but dragged by the end.

The first half of the novel was entirely compelling: the writing is beautiful throughout; at first, the mystery of BYs and the trials set for Vassa felt high-stakes and intriguing, and for the first 2/3rds of the novel the pace clipped along.

Yet, somewhere around the second night of Vassa's work for Babs, the novel began to fray for me. Whatever sympathy/empathy I'd been building with Vassa stalled. The scenes grew too surreal and the characterization took backseat to dream-like plot, which meant that when character moments happened they didn't feel earned.

Weirdly, the author shoe-horned in a small love triangle between Night as motorcycle man, Tomin, and Vassa, which was unnecessary and didn't really work with the story. It felt like some editor somewhere told the author that love triangles were necessary in YA novels, and they're really not. Why on earth did Vassa care so much about Tomin (beyond their shared humanity)? He did nothing to prove to me that he was brave or kind, etc. And why did Tomin want to date Vassa? Very insta-lovey, for no plot payoff.

And why did Vassa care about Babs so much at the end? Baba Yaga in Russian folklore IS an interesting ambiguous character, so she could have been a very complex primary antagonist -- but in this book, she really wasn't. She killed with relish and had dead hands as servants. She turned innocent women into swans. She served her functional purpose (in the fairy tale sense), but with no ambiguity or real depth. Why did Vassa see ambiguity in Babs at the end?

Ultimately, a really creative retelling of Vassalisa, gorgeous writing, but not well-paced and with some baffling characterization (and/or shallow characterization) and unnecessarily convoluted plot choices.