Review: Yellow Brick War (Dorothy Must Die #3)

Yellow Brick War, Book 3 in the Dorothy Must Die Series by Danielle Paige

Published By: Harper Collins
Publication Date: March 15, 2016
Date Read: March 21, 2026
Genre: YA – Retellings
Source: Bought
Format: Paperback
Pages: 270

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Once upon a time, there was a girl from Kansas named Dorothy.

You might know her as the Girl Who Rode the Cyclone. She ended up in Oz, where she became friends with the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion. But the temptation of magic was too much for her. She let it change her. Her friends became twisted versions of their former selves.

The magical land of Oz is now a dark and menacing place.

My name is Amy Gumm. Tornadoes must have a thing about girls from Kansas, because I got swept away on one too. I also landed in Oz, where Good is Wicked, Wicked is Good, and the Wicked Witches clued me in to my true calling:

Assassin.

The only way to stop Dorothy from destroying Oz—and Kansas—is to kill her. And I’m the only one who can do it.

But I failed. Others died for my mistakes. Because of me, the portal between the worlds has been opened and Kansas and Oz are both in danger. And if I don’t find a way to close it?

Dorothy will make sure I never get to go home again.

I was so excited to dive into Yellow Brick War. I have really enjoyed the first two books in the Dorothy Must Die series, and find the whole premise of the series just a really fun ride. I really don’t know what happened with this one. I was so disappointed with how everything went down in this one. Considering it is a really short book, I found it a struggle to get through. It was such a slog.

Yellow Brick War picked up where The Wicked Will Rise left off, with Amy and Dorothy being sent back to Kansas. Here Amy has no access to her magic, and is tasked by The Wicked to find Dorothy’s magic shoes which are somewhere in Kansas. This could be Amy’s only chance to get back to Oz and to defeat Dorothy once and for all.

Honestly… I don’t even know what happened. This book was just… not it. I struggled with it right from the start. I just felt like the pacing really slowed down and I found it a bit boring. I don’t know whether this was because we were back in Kansas and there was less magic going on, but even after we get back to Oz, I was still just so ridiculously bored. This book very much felt just like filler and like none of it was really needed. I don’t know whether this series would have been better as a trilogy, rather than 4 books but this one just fell apart for me. All the way through I was counting the pages to when the chapter or the book was over and telling myself ‘come on you can do this’ and I just feel like I should not be feeling like this when reading.

A lot of the goings on in Yellow Brick War just seemed so random and like it didn’t really make sense. Danielle introduces a whole new villain into the series in here and I was just left wondering ‘what the hell?’. We are at book 3 of 4, I feel like we should be starting to get ready for the finale… not introducing a whole new villain that we have never heard of before. It just seemed to random.

I am still going to be reading the final book in the series, and I have high hopes that it is going to impress me and bring me back into this fun and exciting world. I am looking forward to seeing how Danielle wraps this story up, but this book… definitely didn’t need to be it’s own book. It was too much filler, and I really struggled with it.