Nameless by Lili St. Crow

TL;DR alternate-history Snow White retelling

TBR #332, added Apr 7 2013

finished 5/16/16

Nameless took me a couple days to get through, unlike the two books I'd read before it. I'd plowed through two books in two days and Nameless felt so much longer in comparison after that. 

The book has a really good aesthetic, creating a world with new concepts like jacks and Twists and Family. The Family got the most attention in the book, but the other concepts got enough attention that they added depth to the rest of their universe outside of Cami's story. The aesthetic was also dark and gloomy, which most likely contributed to how slow my reading pace was. 

Cami's backstory felt a little out of place. It was pretty late in the story by the time you learn anything about her outside of the Voltusino family, and at that it wrapped up fairly quickly and a little too nicely. I thought it was kind of disappointing since the blurb made it sound like there would be more focus on her origin. 

It didn't really feel like much of a retelling, either. Ellie and Ruby's retelling origins were a lot clearer than Cami's. It felt more like it was inspired by Snow White than a retelling of it. (I'm only familiar with the Disney version of Snow White, so I could be wrong with this.) The execution of the original story aspects was unique, but there wasn't enough of it for it to be all that interesting. 

I liked the trio of girls and the variety of secondary characters, especially Marya. I didn't like Cami and Nico's relationship, and I don't think any of the characters really changed over the course of the story. Well--Nico changed a little bit, but I'm not really sure it's growth. 

TL;DR it's not a super impressive or compelling book, but I'm interested enough in the universe (and Ellie and Ruby) to add the next book to my TBR. I don't think I'll have a complete opinion of Nameless until I read Wayfarer.