Scott Reads It!

Check out Scott Reads It! for reviews, giveaways & more!Thank you to Merit Press for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for a honest review. Tempestuous is a modern contemporary retelling of Tempest by William Shakespeare. I really appreciate how ambitious of a project this was to undertake because many people hold Shakespeare so dearly. Retelling Shakespeare is nothing new but it takes a lot of courage and determination. If you change the basic plot ever so slightly, you could be accused of mutilating the Bard's works and committing sacrilege. Also I enjoyed how the authors chose to retell Tempest instead of doing an overdone retelling of Romeo And Juliet. How many Romeo and Juliet retellings does the world need? The basic plot of Tempest is still extremely evident in Tempestuous and it was interesting to see how the authors creatively retold the classic play. It's been awhile since I've read Tempest but I remember reading it back in 8th grade. My teacher had praised the book for being's Shakespeare's last work and it being a reflection of his attitude about quitting playwriting. I failed to see the magic and beauty of the play back then and I didn't quit understand the buzz behind it. The fact that I didn't enjoy reading Tempest, didn't hinder my reading of Tempestuous. Tempestuous starts off extremely strong and immediately introduces us to our protagonist, Miranda Prospero. Miranda was kind of sassy (in a good way) and I loved her sarcastic, snarky attitude. She definitely surprised me throughout the novel and she was just so unpredictable. I never really knew what tricks Miranda had up her sleeves and I thought her character was developed well. The other characters were decently developed but I didn't really feel strongly about any of them. Something I noticed was that not all of the characters from Tempest are reincarnated in Tempestuous and I couldn't believe that Caliban failed to appear in this book. I was surprised because Caliban is one of the major antagonists of Tempest and he was one of the only characters who I actually liked. Though Tempestuous starts off spectacularly, it quickly lost steam and became very average. The humorous banter and snark couldn't save the cliched, generic high school drama based plot. Most of the book focuses on typical high school conflicts like bullying and falling-in-love. The mean girls pick on our protagonist and her friends, Miranda feels the need to get revenge on the mean girls. You are probably overly familiar with this plot and at this point it's way too overdone. Also the romance between Miranda and Caleb was pretty basic despite the fact that the author develops their relationship. The best way to describe this book is mindless fun because even though it is extremely cliche, it's still extremely entertaining. One thing that bothered me is that how the author doesn't clearly explain Ariel's abilities and readers who haven't read Tempest will be confused with Ariel's character arc. A few times in the novel, I felt like the author were too reliant on the possibility that readers would be familiar with the plot. Overall, Tempestuous is extremely entertaining but it's nothing readers haven't seen before. Though the author keeps much of the basic plot of Tempest, I still enjoyed this novel. Through humorous dialogue and characters, the authors managed to resuscitate and bring life to one of Shakespeare's most beloved plays. I'm not sure if I would read another one of the "Twisted Lit" novels but I'm not ruling out the possibility.