Scarllet ✦ iamlitandwit's Reviews > Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins

Kissing the Witch is absolutely beautiful. You can't go wrong with haunting language and such bewitching storytelling befitting a fairy tale storybook. It helps that these retellings are wonderfully sapphic wink wink. So many of these are women taking charge of their destinies, of their fates, of their bodies. I also thought that connecting every tale through the "Will I tell you my own story?" bit was a nice way to intertwine these women like what a pleasure!!

My independent ratings for each tale is:
The Tale of the Shoe: 4
The Tale of the Bird: 4.5

My life was in my own hands, now, beating faintly, too small yet for anyone to notice. I cupped freedom to my breast. I would feed it, I would love it; it would grow big enough to carry me away.

The Tale of the Rose: 5++++

In this life I have nothing to do but cavort with the wind, but in my last it was my fate to be a woman.

I truly adored this Beauty and the Beast retelling. It's 100% my favorite, or at least in my top two favorites of this anthology.
The Tale of the Apple:3.5/4
The Tale of the Handkerchief: 4
The Tale of the Hair: 4
The Tale of the Brother: 4.5
The Tale of the Spinster: 4
The Tale of the Cottage: 4
The Tale of the Skin: 3/3.5
Not my favorite of the bunch because of the mad father (you'd get it if you've read it) but I did appreciate the ending.
The Tale of the Needle: 4.5
The Tale of the Voice: 5

But I was coming to realize that my predicament was not unique. At the balls he took me to there were many beautiful young women who didn't say a word. They answered every question with a shrug or a smile. If champagne got spilt down their dresses they only sighed; when the full moon slid out from behind the castle they watched it in silence. I could not understand it. Had they sold their voices too? Even their bodies were silent, always upright, never loosening their lines. They walked like letters on a page.

The Tale of the Kiss: 5++++

On the whole I am inclined to think that a witch should not kiss. Perhaps it is the not being kissed that makes her a witch; perhaps the source of her power is the breath of loneliness around her. She who takes a kiss can also die of it, can wake into something unimaginable, having turned herself into some new species.

The best way to end the book, in my opinion. It ended so strongly! I recommend picking this one up and reading it if not for the fairy tale retellings/lush prose/familiar characters but for the total feminist and empowering stories sprinkled throughout these tales as old as time. And also the sapphic content, ofc!