From Goodreads: Shakespeare’s work features some of the most memorable stories and characters ever created, yet for too many curious readers the combination of ultra-dense dialogue and unfamiliar historical settings make tackling the Bard’s work something between a tedious chore and a confusing mess of bird-bolts and quondam carpet-mongers.

While it’s nearly impossible to replicate or improve on these works, it is (thanks to their timeless nature) possible to make them more accessible to a wider audience.

In this Young Adult retelling of one of William Shakespeare’s most memorable plays, join C.E. Wilson as she breathes new life into Othello, the second book in her series Shakespeare for Everyone Else.

When Archer decides that he’s had enough of Orion and Devony running what he thought was going to be his school he takes desperate measures to ruin everything. Through lies and betrayal, deceit and deception, Archer will stop at nothing to get what he wants, and he doesn’t care whose lives he has to destroy in the process.

Can anyone stop one of William Shakespeare’s most villainous characters in this YA retelling of the epic tragedy of Othello?

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This retelling of Othello makes the bard’s play a bit easier to understand as it’s written in everyday English, but as a young adult novel taking place in a high school setting, well, it’s just not believable.  Neither the situations nor the characters lend themselves to a high school situation that I, personally, find feasible, and the fact that the characters speak in a manner that just isn’t natural made it almost comical in a sense. While in play format, it makes sense for the story to be a little clipped, but in novel format, it just didn’t sit well with me.  While Wilson does a great job staying true to the bards play, the conversations between the characters, and the asides, just did not translate in a manner that made the story believable for me as a reader, and I must say that overall, I personally didn’t really care for it.  Two stars.

I received this novel from the author, via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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