Towering, by Alex Flinn

Almost as far back as she can remember, Rachel has been locked in a tower for her protection. Her Mama tells her that she must stay hidden from the bad man who killed her mother and wants to kill her as well. However, lately Rachel has been having dreams of a mysterious man and as her hair grows longer, Rachel sings out her window and longs for someone to hear her and release her from her prison. Wyatt has been shipped to a tiny town in upstate New York for the rest of the school year and is living with a little old lady whose daughter used to be his mom's best friend. As he settles in, Wyatt starts hearing a haunting voice singing that no one else can hear, and when he investigates he finds a beautiful girl who has been locked in a tower for almost her entire life. The two of them team up and hope to free Rachel from her tower once and for all.

I absolutely love Alex Flinn's other fairy tale retellings. Beastly and A Kiss in Time are two of my favorite books ever, and I was very excited to read Towering. However, Towering had a very different feel to it than the others. Perhaps it was the the plot involving drug lords rather than princesses, but the overall tone of this novel was a lot darker than the others. This is only a negative point because I expected a colorful adventure like the ones in all the other books, but instead found this one a dull gray. The story was also told a bit too slowly, and I had to push myself to get through at least half the book before I actually wanted to open it up and devour it.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***
One problem I always had with the story of Rapunzel, especially the Disney version, is the Rapunzel has no problem killing the woman who raised her. Yes, she was evil and kept her locked up for all those years, but she never did her any physical harm and Rapunzel was taken away young enough to not remember anything better. Therefore, without taking into account the moral compass of the witch, Rapunzel killing the witch is not an act of a hero conquering a villain, but of someone turning her back on the woman who rose her. Rapunzel killing the witch may have turned out okay because the witch was evil, but imagining Rapunzel as pure and good is projecting the third-person perspective of the story onto Rapunzel, who doesn't know that the witch is evil until she falls for a stranger who climbs through her window and he tells her so. This monologue brings me to my point, which is that finally the captor is not the evil one. It was a relief to have the villain be someone else entirely with Mama being entirely innocent, and it let Rachel be a true heroine. 

3.6 stars
 
At first, I merely saw his face, his hands on the window ledge. Then, his whole body as he swung himself through the window. Only I could not see what he swung on.
Until, one day, I told my dream self to look down. And it was then that I saw. He had climbed on a rope. I knew without asking that the rope had been one of my own tying.
Rachel is trapped in a tower, held hostage by a woman she’s always called Mama. Her golden hair is growing rapidly, and to pass the time, she watches the snow fall and sings songs from her childhood, hoping someone, anyone, will hear her.

Wyatt needs time to reflect or, better yet, forget about what happened to his best friend, Tyler. That’s why he’s been shipped off to the Adirondacks in the dead of winter to live with the oldest lady in town. Either that, or no one he knows ever wants to see him again.

Dani disappeared seventeen years ago without a trace, but she left behind a journal that’s never been read, not even by her overbearing mother…until now.