by Stephanie Alexander

A Fantasy, 2012 by Bublish, 354 Pages

What I Didn’t Like:

A few typographical or grammatical errors. You can easily figure out the intention, so it doesn’t distract from the story.
I’m personally never a fan of cheating in any relationship. This is loaded with it. There’s a lot of excuses thrown about for why it’s acceptable (or not) but at the root, it’s cheating and you’ll have to be ready to confront how you feel about that.
Pacing here was a little off. There are scenes of high tension that aren’t given the page time they deserve and then there are some that are given multiple pages despite being minor details. We get lots of details about the castle and the room, for example, but then sort of gloss through the literal arrest of a major character.

Don’t skip the prologue! The beautiful description of a scene we know so well is captivating and beautifully sets the tone for the book to come.
An interesting twist on a tale we know. Obviously, this one is modeled after Cinderella’s famous tale, but the changes and way her tale continues is well done. The original story is honored but this story is much deeper and more real. This Cinderella has a lot more spine than you may remember and, because of that, her story carries more weight.
The Cinderella we remember, of course, could talk to animals. This takes that and RUNS with it. From a talking parrot to unicorns, this has wonderful takes on lots of animals. There are some interesting openings here for this to take a sort of political run at the unicorn relationship in future books, which has potential to be amazing.

Fans of fantasy worlds that aren’t sunshine and Happily-Ever-Afters. Readers of this one want royalty behaving badly and things that don’t turn out like you planned.