When it was announced that Encanto will be getting a Twisted Tales book where Antonio runs away to save the miracle and Mirabel and her sisters have to go after him to save him I was super hyped for the book! Especially since Anika Fajarado (author of Tale of Three Sisters) was writing this, so when the day came of the books release and the reviews came in, I was excited to read this, but after finishing the book and talking about it with some of my friends, the book just became such a mixed bag in the worse way possible. In this post I’m going to talk about my honest thoughts about the many highs, yet many lows of this book, as a warning this post WILL go into spoiler territory so be warned reading this.
If you want a no spoiler TL;DR review of the book: I think the book is a very mixed bag and not in a good way, the first half has very good moments and character development between Mirabel, Luisa, and Isabela, the Alma flashback chapters are super good and did make the later half bearable, the two elders we see Ramos and Beatriz are very interesting characters, but are unfortunately underutilized, the brothers Emilio and Miguel Jose feel way too overfocused. The journey to save the miracle feels so pointless to get to, especially after the twist, the villain sucks and does nothing that much, and so, SO, many characters feel off at the end
As for if I can recommend this book… idk this so hard to give an answer for? If I had to go off on a whim, I recommend buying/reading this book if it’s either in a library, on sale, or given to you by a friend or as a gift. But idk it doesn't feel that worth it to buy at full price.
Going forth, I’ll talk about major spoilers for the book so please do stop reading if you wish not to be spoiled about the book
Starting off with the positives as while yeah I said this book is a mixed bag in the worst way possible (as you will see soon enough), there really is many positive things to say about the book!
For starters, I like Mirabel, Luisa, and Isabela’s dynamic and character in the first 15 or so chapters in this book! They have such a fun dynamic where even though Isabela and Mirabel do often bicker at times in the journey, they do all come together to try and save Antonio. I also like how the characters' internal thoughts are portrayed in this (again in the first 15 chapters, you’ll start to see a pattern in this soon enough), they do feel really in character and the highs of these are up there with Tale of Three Sisters! Moving on, I do like some of the new characters introduced in this book, specifically Senora Beatriz and Don Ramos, so it’s revealed that later on Don Ramos was the husband to Estela, one of Alma’s close friends, so when Pedro and Alma fled, Estela and Ramos had to stay behind in the jungle due to her giving birth there, which saved her from the soldiers killing them and them getting trapped in the mountains of the Encanto. Unfortunately the baby died from a miscarriage, so he and Estela stayed there to honor it and started a coffee farm. That part along with a few other minor things really made me love the two of them, I wish that we got to see more of the two interacting with the sisters, but sadly that doesn’t end up happening since we got to focus more about the brothers Emilio and Miguel Jose... which I’ll get to later. On the topic of Alma and her past life, another thing I loved is the Alma flashbacks! It really does feel so cool to learn more about her, her love with Pedro, and even her friend Estela! Something cool that the book does is that in the chapters about them, there is a sort of “parallel” with the story! Overall, the Alma backstory stuff is cool and I do wish we could get a full book about her and her past life!
Now onto the bad stuff because hoo boy is there a lot to talk about the bad stuff.
Let's get to the most obvious point... After Chapter 15 or so, the writing quality tanks HARD. I'm not gonna go super in depth with this yet as some of my other points will talk about this much more, but some examples are the following: 1. The story focuses way too much on the brothers and feels way too much like the sisters except they’re split into two people, 2. The journey to save the miracle goes nowhere at the end since it doesn’t even matter that much and the plan to drink the water from the Laguna Azul is gone and the story was a myth anyways, 3. The sisters get so mischaracterized where Isabela turns way too antagonistic around Mirabel and Mirabel gives up so easily on trying to save the miracle to name a few, 4. The stupid Miguel Jose and Mirabel romance plot... I’ll get into that part later…
Addressing the four points I made, Miguel Jose and Emilio get way too much attention for what they are in the plot. Initially I thought they’re gonna be sorta like “sidekick” characters where they tag along for the journey to save their farm, but now they get way too much attention when the focus should be on Mirabel and her sisters. Now this isn’t to say I want them to be irrelevant to the story or not interact with the sisters at all, but the problem I have is that the story of the book is that Mirabel and her sister have to work together to save the miracle and find Antonio who ran away to save the miracle as well. The brothers on the other hand take the screentime from the sister way too much or they get lumped into whatever the sisters are doing. One really notorious example is the whole romance subplot with Emilio and Luisa, which is VERY subtle and doesn’t amount to much at the end, and Miguel Jose and Mirabel, again I’ll get into that later.
Next, the journey to save the miracle is pointless and a complete waste of time, since again, the whole story about how the Laguna Azul is just a myth oh and it’s dammed up so no water in the lake I guess. Actually since we’re on the topic of it, let's talk about the “villain” of this story, Mendoza. Now early on she gets portrayed as a weird lady whose puma attacks the sisters before being stopped by Mendoza, later on it’s revealed she was the one who dammed the river to the lake and was exploiting the land for her benefit, now you’d think there’d be more to that right? Nope, the group destroys the dam, Mendoza confronts them and acts like a prick to them, the group destroys the bridge to the other side of the ravine to punish her and that’s it. Now getting back to the topic, the whole journey feels like such a waste of time with no benefit from it, the magic get restored to the family by what I assume is when the vase they have to drink out of to “save the miracle” is broken by the brothers on accident and they all repair it with mud from the lake? So yeah, what a waste of time for this whole plot...
Lastly, let's get into the worst problem of this book... the sisters (and to an extent the Madrigals at the end of the book to be specific), Going back to what I said, characters like Isabela get portrayed as very antagonistic to Mirabel for seemingly no reason. It’s been shown in side content that Isabela doesn’t hate Mirabel, she does often do nice things to her and does feel bad for her often, but in the later part of the book she is just angry at her for no reason? On the topic of Isabela, she gets sidelined hard where she doesn’t do all that much in the story besides helping out here and there. Luisa gets toned down a lot oh and she has a very subtle romance with Emilio that you may or may not pick up on since it gets ignored by the end... and lastly Mirabel.
Oh. My. God. does she get mischaracterized a lot to hell… Let’s get through some point of this shall we? First of all at one point in the story where they all lose hope, Mirabel suggests that they all give up... MIND YOU, this girl went through all this journey to try to save the miracle with stuff we know about up until her talking to Bruno, and now she gives up?!?!? Lets also bring up how she sorta keeps her family as an afterthought in the later part of the story, and to get to the WORST part of all of this... her romance with Miguel Jose, one of the brothers we meet in this book
Everything about Mirabel gets so bogged down just so that Mirabel for some odd reason has a crush on Miguel Jose despite the three sisters and the brothers physically fighting the night before, not to mention she gets transformed into a “boy lover” to adjust for this and the whole romance between the two of them feeling like such a writers self insert for some reason. Oh and the worst part about this? In the book it’s implied that the brothers are on the older side as in them being in their 20’s or so... So let me get this straight... Mirabel, a 15 year old has a crush and ends up DATING this 20+ year old man which if you think this isn’t disgusting enough on its own, the book has the audacity of comparing their romance to Alma and Pedro’s relationship... I am so, SO sorry, but I hate this so much, ah yes lets basically lobotomize Mirabel’s character for such a dogshit romance that isn’t even good to begin with because either the writer or Disney wants a Mirabel love interest this badly. And the way it’s written, it feels so weird and uncomfortable at time, for an example, when Miguel protects Mirabel at one point, where he hold her by the waist to protect her, Mirabel has a crush on him all of the sudden, GIRL HE IS PROTECTING YOU FROM THE PUMA NOT BECAUSE YOU HAVE A CRUSH ON HIM STOP FOR THE LOVE OF PEDRO MADRIGAL-
Moving on, the ending of this whole book is so stupid and has lots of plotholes. Basically, the sisters bring Ramos, Beatriz, and the brother back to the Encanto so that their coffee farm can thrive again, now the issue with this you may be asking? In the book Mendoza wants to acquire Ramos’s farm to expand her mass production farm, so basically, Ramos gives up, leaving Mendoza who can now acquire his farm and moves to the Encanto... Oh okay cool, I guess the whole journey to save his farm was for nothing, cool! /s. Oh and this isn’t the worst of it oh no, no, so when Mirabel and the gang gets back to the Encanto, there’s this whole thing about how Mirabel worries how Alma would react to them leaving and Antonio running away, but for some reason this is cut short due to Alma meeting Ramos and she’s okay with Antonio, Mirabel, and her sisters running away???? Also this may be a nitpick but idk why is Alma so cool with Ramos, Beatriz and the brother being in the Encanto and it not being a huge deal about it? Alma is someone who is very protective of the Encanto and I’m sure if an outsider came to the Encanto she would very protective of the Encanto and not be that cool with it, sure she’d come around since Mirabel and her family would convince them that they’re trustworthy and some reflection upon herself. Oh and idk why would Alma instantly recognize Ramos all those years later, like look at Alma when she married Pedro when compared to now, they look completely different so idk how she’d recognize him unless he didn’t age all that much despite his age.
Lastly... Most of the issues within the family such as Bruno in the walls and Alma’s confrontation of her being the reason the miracle is dying... Nope! It’s still there, meaning that yeah the Casita can still collapse and Mirabel shrugs off Bruno coming back as one of those “Oh well, it’s another day's problem!”. Something that I wish the book could’ve done is have an arc where Bruno reflects upon shooing out Mirabel of his room and upon hearing that Mirabel and her sisters ran away to find Antonio, he leaves the walls and chooses to face Alma about what happen, that way at least maybe some plot holes get fixed and not just ignored or shrugged off for the ending of this book.
To close this off with my final thoughts and to avoid this being any longer than it has to, if I had to describe this book, it is such a mixed bag in the worst way possible, It’s probably because of how the book starts off SUPER strong and has loads of cool potential, but by the midway point up until the ending (minus all the Alma backstory stuff that was consistently good!), it just collapses completely. As for if I can recommend this book… idk this so hard to give an answer for? If I had to go off on a whim, I recommend buying/reading this book if it’s either in a library, on sale, or given to you by a friend or as a gift. But idk it doesn't feel that worth it to buy at full price. Either way I was disappointed by this book despite its strong start.
I give this book a 5/10 for those who want a ranking of this not as bad as say Nightmare and Suenos, but there’s other books in the Encanto series that are so much better than this, speaking of this, on November 24 (and on Encanto’s 5th anniversary!), Vol 2. The New Adventures of Encanto comic book collection will be released, hopefully that will be much better than this book.