Stealing Snow by Danielle Paige

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

Pages: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury Children's
Released: 6th of October 2016 

Seventeen-year-old Snow lives within the walls of the Whittaker Institute, a high security mental hospital in upstate New York. Deep down, she knows she doesn't belong there, but she has no memory of life outside, except for the strangest dreams. And then a mysterious, handsome man, an orderly in the hospital, opens a door – and Snow knows that she has to leave …

She finds herself in icy Algid, her true home, with witches, thieves, and a strangely alluring boy named Kai. As secret after secret is revealed, Snow discovers that she is on the run from a royal lineage she's destined to inherit, a father more powerful and ruthless than she could have imagined, and choices of the heart that could change everything. Heroine or villain, queen or broken girl, frozen heart or true love, Snow must choose her fate

What I Have to Say 

I don't like hating books. I don't like talking about hating books, I just don't like it. Over the years of doing this blog, I've slowly been better about doing reviews for books I don't like. But I still come to them feeling nervous and upset about writing these reviews. So you know I really mean it when I say I just did not like this book at all. It was hard to read and I put it down a couple of times. 

The first thing that bugged me was the institute that Snow was in. They called it an Asylum. Which isn't a term used any more outside the disused and abandoned asylums found in horror films. That was strike one. 

Strike two was the way Snow was put into the "asylum". Now I've been through my fair share of therapy appointments. I know something about the way the system works even if I haven't been in a mental health hospital myself and I just find it impossible to believe that they were dump a six-year-old girl into a hospital just for trying to walk through a mirror. They'd give her a lot of therapy and make sure there are no mirrors in reach, but putting her straight into a mental hospital!? And even if they had, Snow is clearly very recovered from her mirror walking through incident. She doesn't believe that people can walk through mirrors and all the issues that she has now seem to be from growing up in a mental hospital. Even with certain things being revealed at the end of the book and the fantasy elements, I just can't get over how much this put me off the book. 

And finally my last complaint about the book. There are a grand total of 3 boys in this book. All three are in love with Snow. And to all three, Snow shows some sort of interest in back. I have been sick of love triangles for a long time. Adding a third boy to the mix does not improve this. 

I wish I could say some about this book that wasn't negative. I really do. And I honestly hope that the author never reads this review. But this is the way I feel. 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for providing me with this copy for review.