Once Upon a Modern Time: A Collection of Modern Day Fairy Tales

SHORT STORIES:  This is a collection of short stories drawing heavily on childhood favorites such as “Sleeping Beauty”, “Beauty and the Beast”, and “Cinderella”. Some of the shorts feel based on the more classic love story plot lines rather than the time-honored fairy tales. True love triumphs over evil, or in some of these tales, the ill wind. Magic and curses are replaced with modern obstacles ranging from preconceived notions, held by one or two characters wanting opposing objectives, to very real and difficult health issues. In some narratives, the solution is obvious while in others a more creative solution is contrived to achieve the happily ever after closures.

Ms. Puckett’s fairy tales don’t all display the easily recognized tale they mimic while others do, in an almost mirror-like fashion where old fairy tale meets contemporary romance. “Sleeping through the Beauty” loses some of its charm by the over-usage of male dialogue, making it feel like what a woman wishes a man would express verbally. In a couple of stories her characters feel two-dimensional, with opposing conceptions and cheap facades of the more complex shortcomings in humanity. All-in-all, Ms. Puckett’s shorts, their length being non-evasive, have a slightly more than skin-deep frosting on one’s light reading. One might even need a tissue for the more poignant moments.

Shaunna Gonzales