Because You Love to Hate Me Edited by Ameriie

Name: Angelica

Grade: 8th

Title: Because You Love to Hate Me: 13 Tales of Villainy

Author: Edited by Ameriie

Published in: 2017

Pages: 339

Rating: 4.5 stars

Review: Because You Love To Hate Me includes 13 famous stories told from the villains’ point of view. The giant in “Jack and the Beanstalk”, Jim Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes, Death itself… The bad guys finally get their say in what happened, and all of their emotions and troubles are presented to the readers. After each short story, there’s a two or three paged explanation or extension of the story by different booktubers. Besides flipping everything we know about traditional stories, the authors also included serious ideas like the rights of women, family pressure, and drugs.

This book is very inspirational for readers that are looking for something new and profound. Two of my favorite characters are the Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid and Mei Du, or Medusa set in ancient China. The boundary between hero and villain is blurry and faint, and what split people into different stereotypes is others’ perceptions. People might be self-conscious of how they are portrayed, while others might not care at all. Peer pressure is surely a very important issue in both the fictional worlds in the book and the modern world that we live in.

Of course, that is not the only idea discussed in the book. For example, the concept of female independence and power is incorporated into the stories “The Sea Witch”, “Beautiful Venom”, and “Marigold”. In each of the stories, the villain, or protagonist in these stories, start as timid women trying to fit in their society. As the plot unfolds, the character slowly realizes that she does not need to succumb to the male-led society and gathers her power. So are they villains?

I love this book and would advise my friends to read it. Each story is short but grabs the attention of the readers. It is like nothing that I’ve ever read before, and I relish the read. A quote: “No fairy tale will ever seem quite the same again…”

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