Review: The End of Oz (Dorothy Must Die #4)

The End of Oz, Book 4 in the Dorothy Must Die series by Danielle Paige

Published By: Harper Collins
Publication Date: March 4, 2017
Date Read: April 16, 2026
Genre: YA – Retellings
Source: Bought
Format: Paperback
Pages: 277

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Ding dong—Dorothy is dead.

I watched as the Emerald Palace crumbled to the ground, burying Dorothy, the Girl Who Rode the Cyclone, under the rubble. And now that the rightful ruler, Ozma, has been restored to the throne…

Oz is finally free.

My name is Amy Gumm. You might remember me as the other girl from Kansas. When a tornado whisked me away to the magical land of Oz, I was given a mission: Dorothy must die.

But it turns out girls from Kansas are harder to kill than we look.

Now the Road of Yellow Brick is leading me away from Oz to the dark world of Ev, where I have a new, powerful enemy to deal with: the Nome King. And—surprise—he has a gingham-clad bride.

With my magical shoes and a shrinking group of allies, I have one final chance to fulfill my mission, and save not only what’s left of Oz, but Kansas, too. As the line between Good and Wicked blurs even further, I have to find a way to get rid of Dorothy once and for all—without turning into a monster myself.

Dorothy once said there’s no place like home. Can I stop her from destroying mine?

I am so happy to finally get to finish the Dorothy Must Die series. I originally read book 1 in this series back in 2015, so finishing this series has definitely been a long time coming. While I wasn’t crazy about the ending of this series, I have to say that I enjoyed The End of Oz significantly better than Yellow Brick War.

The End of Oz follows on right where Yellow Brick War left off, with Dorothy ‘dead’ under the flattened Emerald City palace and Amy and Nox searching for a way to defeat the Nome King. As you can gather from the blurb however, Dorothy is not actually dead and despite my initial reaction of ‘my god, will this girl not just die already?’ thank god she did not. This book introduced Dorothy’s point of view for a number of chapters, and I genuinely feel like this was the book’s saving grace. It was a change of pace that was definitely needed, and I ended up enjoying her chapters more than Amy’s.

This book was definitely more enjoyable than its predecessor, and I found myself looking forward to see what was going to happen rather than racing through the chapters, looking forward to finishing. However, having said that, I feel like the ending of this series was just not all that satisfying. It all happened, and wrapped up just a little too neatly and I was left with so many questions. In a bid to keep this spoiler free, I will not add those thoughts here, but they will be in a spoiler tag on my Goodreads review that you can find by clicking HERE.

Overall I am really glad that I finally finished this series. For me it was a fantastic idea, that just needed a little bit of a better execution later in the series. I feel like the author wrote herself into a few too many corners, with no clear way out. It’s such a shame as I did really enjoy the authors writing style and storytelling. I am appreciative that this series was her debut series and so I will definitely still be trying some of her later work. If you’re a big fan of Oz and Wicked, I still think this series is worth reading, but for me it should have been a trilogy and the final books felt a little bit drawn out.