Review: Stitching Snow by R.C. Lewis

Stitching Snow by R.C. Lewis

Published October 14th 2014

Stitching Snow is about a girl named Essie who lives on the frozen  planet Thanda. She makes her living by coding and repairing local drones that work in the mines. She also fights in underground cage matches with grown men when she’s low on money.  This is marketed as retelling of Snow White.

I didn’t read the synopsis of this before starting but I heard it was a retelling from other readers and I was super excited. I really love retellings so this seemed like the perfect matched for me. And it was, to a point.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that Stitching Snow is a sci-fi retelling. About a girl who fixes robots and other mechanic like things. I really love Cinder by Marissa Meyer so it took me only a few pages to notice how homogeneous these two books are. For about 70 pages, this book was so similar to Cinder. It was extremely off-putting to me. Stitching Snow basically copied Cinder, in my opinion.

But what keep me going was how Essie was an underground cage fighter in her spare time. That was seriously so cool and I’ve never seen something like that done with a female protagonist in YA. I loved that aspect for this book so much. That was my favorite part of this whole book.
Essie, for the first 150 pages, was such a cool character. She kicked butt, she was smart, and she strived to be treated like an equal with the guys.
Dane was pretty good at first as well. He didn’t seem to have a large part in the story and I thought that was a great choice by RC Lewis. Essie really got to shine as the main character. However, as the book when on, the character’s development went down hill.
The story quickly became about Dane and Essie not just Essie. Dane became moody and a pain in the butt and Essie quit being a smart girl who knew more than the guys and could break anyone’s nose to just a girl in a story.
Stitching Snow became a romance and love started inching its way to the main focus of the story.

The plot, besides being a rip off of Cinder, was really fun and fast paced. I read it in pretty much two days and it actually was able to keep my attention for long periods of time.

Overall, not the best book I’ve read this year but it was fun and enjoyable. I wish the story would have taken a different course but it wasn’t all that bad. If you’re looking for an easy read in the sci-fi genre, I do really recommend this book.