Book Review: A Whole New World
By Liz Braswell
In the retelling of the Disney classic, Aladdin, Jafar stole the lamp pushing Aladdin, Abu, and Carpet back into the cave of wonder. When he summons the Genie he uses his first two wishes to become sultan of Agrabah and the most powerful sorcerer in the world. After showing his power and capturing the people of Agrabah's favour, Jafar uses his third wish to make Jasmine fall deeply in love with him. But this is not in Genie's rules. After being refused, Jafar starts to look into how to over rule the Genie's rules: he can't make people fall in love with each other and he can't bring people back from the dead.
During this time Jasmine escapes and is on the run. Finding the Street Rat she has previously met in the market place, together along with the other Street Rat's of Agrabah they build a rebellion against Jafar. With fear of what Jafar's actual third wish will be, the people of Agrabah go against the man they fear the most.
A Whole New World is a twisted tale on the Disney classic, Aladdin. There are no songs and lot of this story is not considered "feel good".
I love the movie Aladdin, while I was excited to read this retelling (with a twist) story I felt a little let down on the route this novel took. I like the idea that Jafar got the lamp first but after the first few chapters I'm not sure I enjoyed this novel as much as I hoped.
But looking at this novel for what it is - I enjoyed the character development of Jasmine considering what happened to her during the course of this novel. I wish there was more with Aladdin and his mother in the novel as the first chapter was a flashback then we never really heard about her again. Even having an inside look to Jafar or the Genie's point of view would have given this an interesting spin.
The thing I did really enjoy was the twist ending of Jafar's final wish and Jasmine's character outcome.
I did think there are some questions to which age category this novel is written for, some scenes were darker for the audience I thought this book was for but the writing itself has a younger age in mind.
I gave this novel a ⭐⭐⭐ review. Overall, I enjoyed this book for a retelling of one of my favourite Disney movies.
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