by Madelyn Hutchison
Hello everyone! I hope you love Disney retellings because this issue I’ll be reviewing the book titled What Once Was Mine by Liz Braswell. Let’s get into it, shall we?
About The Author: According to her website, Braswell was born in England, but she grew up in a small town in Connecticut–eventually earning her degree in Egyptology at Brown University. Braswell has made a name for herself with her Disney retellings.
She currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two kids. Before she started writing, she had worked as a video game developer for ten years. Braswell first started off her writing career with two pseudonyms: Tracy Lynn and Ceilia Thompson. With these two names she wrote her first two novels titled Snow and Rx. Shortly after, she started writing books and publishing her real name on them.
Those books are The Nine Lives of Chloe King series. Braswell then initializes the fairy tale reimaginings. Her first book of that series is titled A Whole New World which is a retelling of Disney’s Aladdin. Since the first publication in 2015 she has written retellings of stories such as Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Mulan, Peter Pan, Alice and Wonderland, all the way up to a Rapunzel retelling published in 2022. In short, she’s created quite the long rap sheet for herself.
The plot of What Once Was Mine: The book cover of Braswell’s retold fairy tales has a “What if ” question displayed. In the case of What Once Was Mine, the question is whether or not the queen drank the essence of the right flower. In the Disney version, Rapunzel’s mom drank a potion of a flower that healed her and her baby, gaining Rapunzel powers later in life that turn back time and that contain healing properties.
Told from the perspective of a supportive older brother who tries his best to help his sister through her chemo treatment, this version has Rapunzel’s mother drink the wrong potion, and so Rapunzel’s powers are different–a lot darker.
When baby Rapunzel accidently kills her wet nurse in a fit of infant rage, as her hair was touching the woman at the time, the King and Queen decide to send their daughter away with a witch. They do this in hopes that the crown princess can return when she gains control of her powers.
The witch of course was Mother Gothel. Mother Gothel claimed to be a powerful witch who would teach the young girl how to understand and control her powers, in reality the woman was no sorceress at all and simply wanted to care for the child as a quick cash grab.
Gothel repeatedly told Rapunzel throughout her life that she had killed her parents and that it was her fault. Often having to kill her own food as punishment if she disobeyed Gothel or gave into her attitude. In short, Gothel was no “mother.”
She would inform multiple lords and ladies about Rapunzel, in hopes that she could either marry her off, or force her into servitude once she became of age. One day, Rapunzel spies a lonely traveler not far from her tower, hiding something in a tree and running away into the woods that surrounded her tower.
After scenes of sending Gothel away to get some of her favorite paints, the young girl gains enough courage to go outside to get the unknown bag from the tree.
That’s where she found her crown–even if she didn’t know it was hers. Filled with the essence of adventure, she decides that she is going to find the mysterious man who hid the satchel in hopes he can take her to the floating lanterns.
This man turns out to be Disney’s Flynn Rider. Shortly after Rapunzel finds Flynn and Gina (a character created by Braswell who’s essentially the female version of Flynn which you find out why if you read the book) Gothel returns to the tower to find that Rapunzel is missing.
Gothel quickly informs all the lords and ladies that are bidding on the princess, and they send out their own men to find her. After this, so many things happen, like how Rapunzel meets Gina’s mom who is a witch to teach her about all the other things her hair can do, not just kill and that her powers are linked to the phases of the moon.
Rapunzel learns the whole truth, about her hair and about her parents, and even gets caught by a countess who is a known serial torturer and killer, which unfolds many more events.
OP-ED: My Thoughts: First things first, I love Disney, and have been obsessed with Braswell’s retellings since I read As Old As Time- the Beauty and the Beast re-imagined novel. Ever since that read, I’ve been slowly collecting and reading all of the “Twisted Tale” series.
I also really loved Tangled growing up and whenever I feel sad or unmotivated, I end up being drawn to that movie along with a few others, in order to make me feel better. As you can probably guess, I had high expectations for this book and would’ve been sorely disappointed if it didn’t meet them. Luckily, I loved it! I loved everything about this book.
Starting with the fact that it’s from an older brother’s perspective after he’s watched Tangled and read the book every time his little sister had a chemo appointment, as his little sister was suffering from cancer, and he wanted to change it up a little bit to make the story more interesting.
Another thing I am a sucker for is when the author goes in depth about magic and how it works within their world, when there is clearly a magic system in place, with clear limits. Unlike in the movie, Rapunzel’s magic in this book depends on the phases of the moon, and with each phase, her hair can magically do something different.
That’s a clear structure, and the best part, in my opinion at least, is that you get to watch her figure out how it works. The third thing that I loved about this book–and is definitely at the top of my list–is the fact that the brother telling the story, Brenden, is a huge history nerd.
So what does a huge history nerd do when faced with a fictional story set in the past? Make it as accurate as possible. With the outfits, food, the poor and so on. He even includes Countess Elizabeth Bathory as one of the ladies who goes after Rapunzel.
Quick warning for those who get squeamish easily, and have difficulties dealing with blood.
Bathory was a Hungarian Lady, who was known for torturing the young girls of the village that she was suppoesed to take care of. Supposedly she’d bring in young girls to work and teach them, and the poorer families were more then happy to supply their daughters because it meant that the girls would get plenty of food and a roof over their head.
The only problem was, she wasn’t actually doing that. In the early 1500s and was rumored to actually bathe in the young girls blood in order to keep her youthful. So when Rapunzel was caught by the infamous figure, I genuinely felt concerned and feared she wouldn’t make it out of her horrible castle.
In short, I would definitely recommend What Once Was Mine if you still want the “Happily Ever After” ending that Disney offers you, but still want things to go a little dark and devilish.