A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables, 2)
A Mirror Mended is the next installment in USA Today bestselling author Alix E. Harrow's Fractured Fables series.
Finalist for the Hugo Award!
Zinnia Gray, professional fairy-tale fixer and lapsed Sleeping Beauty is over rescuing snoring princesses. Once you’ve rescued a dozen damsels and burned fifty spindles, once you’ve gotten drunk with twenty good fairies and made out with one too many members of the royal family, you start to wish some of these girls would just get a grip and try solving their own narrative issues.
Just when Zinnia’s beginning to think she can't handle one more princess, she glances into a mirror and sees another face looking back at her: the shockingly gorgeous face of evil, asking for her help. Because there’s more than one person trapped in a story they didn’t choose. Snow White's Evil Queen has found out how her story ends and she's desperate for a better ending. She wants Zinnia to help her before it’s too late for everyone.
Will Zinnia accept the Queen's poisonous request, and save them both from the hot iron shoes that wait for them, or will she try another path?
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Community Reviews
Originally reviewed on Cyn's Workshop
A Mirror Mended takes Zinnia back into the multiverse on her quest to continue to foil the villains until the villain asks for her help.
Amazing Storytelling
If I have said it once, I will repeat it, Harrow is a fantastic author, and I love her. A Mirror Mended is the sequel to A Spindle Splintered. Zinnia is still traversing the multiverse, but the lines between the universes are becoming more blurred.
I love that this story focuses more on Zinnia and her reluctance to return to her life. It makes sense. Returning home means resetting the clock on her life. However, because she meddles, fairytale elements appear in unexpected places and become untethered from their fairytales.
And vice versa.
The Wicked Stepmother from Snow White, a woman without a name, without an identity, has gotten a hold of Zinnia’s collection of fairytales. Now aware of her fate, she seeks Zinnia’s help to escape her fairytale and fate.
Once again, Harrow is dismantling more fairytale tropes, this time of a different one. And through it, now teamed up with the villain, Zinnia explores her mortality and what defines a villain. It is, after all, all about perception. And her reluctance to return to her universe and live in fairytale after fairytale while keeping her fate at bay does not ensure her own happily ever after.
I loved that Harrow is delving into what makes a fairytale and what defines that happy ending. It is about what you make of it. Even Zinnia, her happiness is what she can make of it.
Final Thoughts
A Mirror Mended is a superb novel and fabulous follow-up to A Spindle Splintered. If I have one complaint, it’s that I want more. But more would have ruined what is otherwise a short and sweet story about villains and making your happiness.
See more reviews at Cyn's Workshop and follow me on Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Tumblr | Spotify Podcast | YouTube | BookBub | Goodreads+ | LinkedIn
A Mirror Mended takes Zinnia back into the multiverse on her quest to continue to foil the villains until the villain asks for her help.
Amazing Storytelling
If I have said it once, I will repeat it, Harrow is a fantastic author, and I love her. A Mirror Mended is the sequel to A Spindle Splintered. Zinnia is still traversing the multiverse, but the lines between the universes are becoming more blurred.
I love that this story focuses more on Zinnia and her reluctance to return to her life. It makes sense. Returning home means resetting the clock on her life. However, because she meddles, fairytale elements appear in unexpected places and become untethered from their fairytales.
And vice versa.
The Wicked Stepmother from Snow White, a woman without a name, without an identity, has gotten a hold of Zinnia’s collection of fairytales. Now aware of her fate, she seeks Zinnia’s help to escape her fairytale and fate.
Once again, Harrow is dismantling more fairytale tropes, this time of a different one. And through it, now teamed up with the villain, Zinnia explores her mortality and what defines a villain. It is, after all, all about perception. And her reluctance to return to her universe and live in fairytale after fairytale while keeping her fate at bay does not ensure her own happily ever after.
I loved that Harrow is delving into what makes a fairytale and what defines that happy ending. It is about what you make of it. Even Zinnia, her happiness is what she can make of it.
Final Thoughts
A Mirror Mended is a superb novel and fabulous follow-up to A Spindle Splintered. If I have one complaint, it’s that I want more. But more would have ruined what is otherwise a short and sweet story about villains and making your happiness.
See more reviews at Cyn's Workshop and follow me on Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Tumblr | Spotify Podcast | YouTube | BookBub | Goodreads+ | LinkedIn
A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow
We listened to this book together on audio in the hospital room. We wanted something fun and light and short. Something we could listen to for a while, nap for a while and pick right back up. And at just under four hours this book was perfect for that. It’s the second book in the series, but I don’t think you’d be missing anything if you started here. I haven’t read the first book, but with how much I loved this one, I will be reading it sometime. I knew from the opening of this book that I was going to like it. It had all the ingredients I love in a story. An interesting and relatable protagonist, fairy tale references galore! It’s not a retelling, but rather fairy tales make up alternate realities. A multiverse of fairy tales. It has nods to my all time favorite city - Madison. And the story telling voice is engaging and addictive. What I wasn’t expecting was just how deeply this was going to hit me on an emotional level. There are layers to this book, nuance around relationships, friends and romantic both. And there’s a story about agency, about self determination, that had me crying - in a good way - by the end.
Do you remember the Ruth monologue at the end of the Barbie movie? No major spoilers if you haven’t seen it (but you should honestly see it). There’s a part where they are talking about permission to be who you want to be. Barbie asks “So being human isn’t something that I ask for, or even want? It’s just something that I discover that I am?” There’s a lot in that ending, and that was just one of those moments that hit home. Any story that has that element of “you don’t need to ask permission to be who you are” or any story about someone finding their own agency, about becoming who they are without waiting for permission, will always win me over.
And this story has that in the most beautiful moving way. I don’t want to say too much, because I really want you to read this book. If you’re someone who follows me and reads my posts, especially if you make it to the bottom of my rambling, I’m about 99% sure you’d like this story.
If you’ve read it, I’d love to hear what you think.
If you end up reading it later, I’d love it if you’d come back here any let me know what you think afterwards :)
cross posted from my instagram
instagram.com/winteregress
We listened to this book together on audio in the hospital room. We wanted something fun and light and short. Something we could listen to for a while, nap for a while and pick right back up. And at just under four hours this book was perfect for that. It’s the second book in the series, but I don’t think you’d be missing anything if you started here. I haven’t read the first book, but with how much I loved this one, I will be reading it sometime. I knew from the opening of this book that I was going to like it. It had all the ingredients I love in a story. An interesting and relatable protagonist, fairy tale references galore! It’s not a retelling, but rather fairy tales make up alternate realities. A multiverse of fairy tales. It has nods to my all time favorite city - Madison. And the story telling voice is engaging and addictive. What I wasn’t expecting was just how deeply this was going to hit me on an emotional level. There are layers to this book, nuance around relationships, friends and romantic both. And there’s a story about agency, about self determination, that had me crying - in a good way - by the end.
Do you remember the Ruth monologue at the end of the Barbie movie? No major spoilers if you haven’t seen it (but you should honestly see it). There’s a part where they are talking about permission to be who you want to be. Barbie asks “So being human isn’t something that I ask for, or even want? It’s just something that I discover that I am?” There’s a lot in that ending, and that was just one of those moments that hit home. Any story that has that element of “you don’t need to ask permission to be who you are” or any story about someone finding their own agency, about becoming who they are without waiting for permission, will always win me over.
And this story has that in the most beautiful moving way. I don’t want to say too much, because I really want you to read this book. If you’re someone who follows me and reads my posts, especially if you make it to the bottom of my rambling, I’m about 99% sure you’d like this story.
If you’ve read it, I’d love to hear what you think.
If you end up reading it later, I’d love it if you’d come back here any let me know what you think afterwards :)
cross posted from my instagram
instagram.com/winteregress
“I spent the first twenty-one years of my life being Zinnia Gray the Dying Girl, killing time until my story ended…But I'm also Zinnia Gray the Dimension-Hopping, Damsel-Saving Badass, and I can't quit now. I may not have much of a happily ever after, but I'm going to give away as many as I can before I go…I know I'm not at my sharpest-having been zapped into a dozen different universes, lightly tortured, imprisoned, kissed, nearly executed, rescued, and chastised by pretty much everyone I've ever met.”
"Moving between worlds…keeps me skipping from world to world like a stone across the cold surface of the universe…the universe is like a book…And each world is like a page. And if you tell the same story enough times, you can bleed through to another page…I must write down my own story.”
“Branches and ballgowns, towers and thorns, dozens of dark tales told so many times they came true…The existence of any story implies the existence of a storyteller…the only thing stopping me from writing a new story is the fact that I'm bad at it…But maybe every story is a lie until it isn't…I set the quill to the page and write: Once upon a time…I don't know what happens next…It's your story. You tell me."
“When you save someone, sometimes they save you right back…We don't all get to choose the parts we're given to play, but we all get to choose what we do next…This time, when I touch the mirror and fall into the space between worlds, I'm not running away or rushing to anyone's rescue. I'm not looking for a new once upon a time or hoping, secretly and shamefully, for my happily ever after. This time I'm just trying to live. Happily.”
Alix E. Harrow’s fractured fairytale A Mirror Mended pairs well with Disney’s new Snow White, a 2025 American musical fantasy.
My review is similar to the first book in this series. It does have cheesy lines and references that I’m not sure will age well with the book. However, I liked this book! I was invested in the story and characters. I like that it subversives expectations of the genre. Overall, I enjoyed the journey. I look forward to reading the next book in the series!
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