Review for A Curse Dark as Gold

          So, two things happened this week in my Krazy Elf bookworld. 1: After months of talking about it I finally got enough money to get the Hunger Games Trilogy! and 2: I hit my goal in the 2011 GoodReads Reading Challenge! 35 books may not sound like a ton compared to how much my sister and some friends read but I can’t remember then last time I read that much in a year! Now I’m just waiting til Christmas when I can open a certain book shaped present under the tree ^_^

A Curse Dark as Gold

Author: Elizabeth C. Bunce

Genre: Fairy Tale Remake

Page: 392

            Well, this is kind of interesting considering my first post was about a Rumpelstiltskin remake but here I am again. I blame it on the show Once Upon A Time. Why did they have to make Rumpelstiltskin so incredibly cool? I like way too many villains… anyway… I thought this was a very interesting twist to the old fairy tale. It follows young Charlotte Miller who had just inherited a wool mill from her recently departed
father. Charlotte and her sister Rosie have grown up in the mill, and they have the support of the worker, so it sounds like it should be a piece of cake right? Well it might have been easier if the place wasn’t cursed. Since the beginning of the mills history there have been strange happenings about: Fallen signs, cracks in the walls after the old ones have been fixed, machines that won’t work though there is nothing wrong with them, odd doors that won’t open, and this is just the mill. The Miller family had tragedies of their own on top of that, like the fact that the mill has never passed from father to son but to nephews, cousins, or daughters. Charlotte is determined that it is just superstition but pretty soon she feels the effects of the curse bearing down on her. Then a man appears, calling himself Jack Spinner, and he says he has a solution to her money problems: Gold Thread. Desperate to save her mill Charlotte gives in, but at what cost. Add that on top of the arrival of a mysterious uncle who’s trying to marry the girls off and sell the mill and you’ve got the makings of a page turner.

            I was going to give this book three stars until about the last 50 pages then it got bumped up to four stars. I love how Bunce spun in the supernatural into this classic fairy tale. There were a couple scenes that just had me so engaged I was like “woooooow”. It almost made me think of Supernatural with the hints of curses, spirits, and crossroads. Although sometimes I thought it just got a little ridiculous how many things went wrong. It was fairly predictable: things are looking up, oh no something happened. Darn that curse. I understand what the author was trying to do but I don’t think it flowed as well as it could have.

Charlotte was not your typical young lady who only cared about pretty thing but a hard worker who cared deeply for her family and the town who depended on the mill for their survival. She was a bit naïve about “worldly” things and there were times I wanted to yell at her for keeping so many secrets. So many problems in books/movies/TV shows could be solved if people would just communicate. But I guess we’d never have stories then.lol There were a couple nitpick problems (I feel like I’m trashing this book but I actually did like it, I promise). I got really confused at the start of the book with all the names. I got the mill name and the village name mixed up for a while and there just seemed to be so many names. I also had a hard time determining ages for the characters. Unless I missed something when the characters were first introduce I don’t believe there were any ages given. I also though one guy was middle aged until they started hinting at a romance between him and the younger sister… yeah, I must have missed something there. All in all, good book and I would recommend it for those who love the fairy tales world.

Moral of the Story 

For pity sake, don't make deals with creepy ghosts!

4 out of 5 Elf Cookies