Published: September 2021
Author: Liz Braswell
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy / Fairy Tale Retelling / Disney Twisted Tale
Audience: Grades 7–10 (Middle School & Early High School)
Number of Stars: ★★★★★ (5/5)
Goodreads Link: What Once Was Mine
Content/Trigger Warnings: Severe parental emotional abuse, psychological gaslighting, confinement, and themes of lethal magic.
Review by: Sara Tripp
Publisher’s Summary
What if Rapunzel’s mother drank a potion from the wrong flower?
Desperate to save the life of their queen and her unborn child, the good people of Corona search for the all-healing Sundrop flower to cure her—but mistakenly acquire the shimmering Moondrop flower instead. Nonetheless it heals the queen, and she delivers a healthy baby girl with hair as silver and gray as the moon. With it comes dangerous magical powers: the power to hurt, not heal. For her safety and the safety of the kingdom, Rapunzel is locked in a tower and put under the care of powerful goodwife, Mother Gothel.
For eighteen years Rapunzel stays locked away, knowing she must protect others from her magical hair. But when she leaves the only home she’s ever known, wanting only to see the floating lights that appear on her birthday, she gets caught up in an adventure across the kingdom with two thieves—a young woman named Gina, and Flynn Rider, a rogue on the run. Before she can reach her happy ending, Rapunzel learns that there may be more to her story, and her magical tresses, than she ever knew.
Review
This specific addition to the Disney Twisted Tale series was a little harder to get into initially than others that I have read in the past. It was genuinely heartbreaking to read about Rapunzel stuck in that isolated tower day after day, constantly consumed by the paralyzing fear that she could accidentally murder or severely harm someone with her own hair.
To maintain this total isolation, Mother Gothel repeatedly feeds her psychological lies to keep her terrified, insecure, and tucked away from the world. In the original animated film Tangled, the tower sequence is filled with humor and Rapunzel is famously cheerful. By contrast, this book strips away that lightheartedness, focusing heavily on Rapunzel’s deep psychological struggles and internal trauma.
The narrative shifts beautifully once she breaks free. She meets fiercely loyal friends along her journey—including a new female thief named Gina alongside the charismatic Flynn Rider—and she gradually begins to dismantle the web of lies Mother Gothel spun around her childhood.
Ultimately, this is a story entirely about Rapunzel uncovering her true identity. Over the course of her harrowing journey, she finally realizes her immense inner strength, sheds her engineered fears, and steps into the independent, courageous girl she was always meant to be. It is a fantastic, emotionally resonant five-star retelling!
🎒 Classroom & Curricular Connections
- English Language Arts & Creative Writing (Deconstructing and Inverting Motifs):
- Activity Idea: “The Twisted Element Matrix.” Analyze how changing a single variable (Sundrop vs. Moondrop) alters the entire tone, genre, and character arc of a classic story. Have students select a familiar fairy tale (e.g., Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty) and swap a core magical item or trait for its cosmic opposite (e.g., glass slippers that make the wearer invisible, or a spinning wheel that grants hyper-vigilance instead of sleep). Have them write a outline mapping out how this structural swap alters the protagonist’s psychology.
- Social-Emotional Learning & Counseling (Recognizing Emotional Abuse and Coercive Control):
- Activity Idea: “Decoding the Tower Lies.” Contrast the comedic version of Mother Gothel in Tangled with the chillingly abusive version presented in What Once Was Mine. Lead a classroom discussion on the warning signs of emotional abuse, coercive control, and isolation. Have students highlight specific quotes from the book where Gothel uses fear to erode Rapunzel’s self-esteem, translating those manipulations into a real-world analysis of how to recognize and resist psychological gaslighting.
