Blog Tour ~ "Once Upon a Dream" by Liz Braswell

What if the sleeping beauty never woke up? Once Upon a Dreammarks the second book in a new YA line that reimagines classic Disney stories in surprising new ways.

It should be simple--a dragon defeated, a slumbering maiden, a prince poised to wake her. But when said prince falls asleep as soon as his lips meet the princess's, it is clear that this fairy tale is far from over.

With a desperate fairy's last curse infiltrating her mind, Princess Aurora will have to navigate a dangerous and magical landscape deep in the depths of her dreams. Soon she stumbles upon Phillip, a charming prince eager to join her quest. But with Maleficent's agents following her every move, Aurora struggles to discover who her true allies are, and moreover, who she truly is. Time is running out. Will the sleeping beauty be able to wake herself up?

Most fairytales have a ‘moral to the story’ – do these re-writings also have a message for readers?

There’s an old quote by Samuel Goldwyn about this sort of thing. Allegedly he told one of his producers that when it came to movie making “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.” Which is both funny and heartbreaking at the same time. 

Everyone writes for different reasons and certainly you can write a fun story with no moral or message in it whatsoever… But there is, however, a third option: you can include a message without beating the reader over the head with it. Readers will have to judge for themselves how successful I have been with that. 

SPOILER ALERT:

Once Upon a Dream is really about being trapped in depression, something that affects far too many teens, especially teen girls. One of the most tragic aspects of depression is that the solutions and exits to whatever problem the victim feels mired in may seem obvious to outside observers (Prince Philip, eg)—but don’t even occur to the person who is affected. It takes a staggering amount of strength to overcome the feeling of impossibility of everything, to grab life by the horns and take charge.

This book is Aurora Rose’s journey through that grey haze of lassitude and sadness and how, with a little help from her friends—and even enemy!—she manages to pull herself out and become the queen she was meant to be.


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After the sort of introverted childhood you would expect from a writer, Liz earned a degree in Egyptology at Brown University and then promptly spent the next ten years producing video games. Finally she caved into fate and wrote Snow and Rx under the name Tracy Lynn, followed by The Nine Lives of Chloe King series under her real name, because by then the assassins hunting her were all dead. She also has short stories in Geektastic and Who Done It and a new series of reimagined fairy tales coming out, starting with A Whole New World—a retelling of Aladdin.

She lives in Brooklyn with a husband, two children, a cat, a part-time dog, three fish and five coffee trees she insists will start producing beans any day. You can email her at me@lizbraswell.com.