3 stars

I was very excited to read this book after it was described as a feminist retelling of fairy tales. But I was kind of disappointed by the stories. Some were good, but others were very confusing and just weird.
The writing was very complex, which I think was good and bad at the same time. At times, Carter creates descriptions that are truly amazing. She demonstrates her mastery of language. But other times the writing just seemed to go too in-depth without furthering the plot. This made some of the stories a little boring for me. There were too many descriptions and not enough movement of the story.
“The Bloody Chamber” was by far my favorite. This one definitely met my expectations. It was a cool retelling and I loved the empowering ending. A lot of descriptions, but they added to the story for the most part.
“The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” and “The Tiger’s Bride” were both okay. They were retellings of Beauty and the Beast, but I didn’t really see the point of them. At times they were very creepy, and not in a good way.
I did like “Puss in Boots”, because of the feline narrator, but the story itself was a little off-putting. Silly, juvenile love stuff that was often humorous, but took a pretty dark turn at the end.
“The Erl King” was really confusing and I did not like the heroine very much until the very end.
“The Snow Child” was my least favorite. It was disgusting and had no point to it whatsoever. It’s a very short tale, but every word of it made me grimace.
And the rest of the tales (“The Lady of the House of Love”, “The Werewolf”, “The Company of Wolves”, and “Wolf-Alice”) were all overly descriptive, sensual vampire and werewolf stories with lots of sex stuff. Not really my kind of thing.
Overall, it was a good book, but there was definitely a range of stories. Most of them included blood (menses) and sex, which seemed to be the “feminist” aspect of the story, but there is more to feminism than women who enjoy sex. Definitely worth reading solely for the story, “The Bloody Chamber” though.