we've been reading The Grimm Conclusion by Adam Gidwitz, the third in a trilogy of YA novels that are a retelling of Grimm's fairy tales, for our nightly story time. How to even explain this book?

It's like an MFA writer wanted to write a really meta novel about narrative and storytelling but then went to therapy and decided to write about all the lessons he learned from therapy in the form of gruesome retellings of fairy tales where children learn that adults often fail or harm them, how to put up boundaries, how to distinguish their own desires from the desires projected onto them by authority figures and peers, and how to feel your feelings (and the dangers you will face if you do not learn how to be an emotionally resilient and healthy person). The Grimm Conclusion in particular has, in my opinion, so much fun playing around with the concept of the narrator as another character in the story that I'm sure comes across as self-indulgent to some but also therapeutic for others. Also, it has one of the more interesting depictions of Hell and Satan I've read in a while.

In other words, I do recommend if you're into that thing.