e-Audio, 12:54:22
Narrated by: Jayne EntwistleRelease Date: May 14, 2019Published by: Scholastic Audio
Read from: August 2-8, 2019Stand-aloneSource: Library (Overdrive/ Libby)TW:For fans of: Re-tellings, strong female characters, Fantasy, Sparkly Covers, YA
Isabelle should be blissfully happy – she’s about to win the handsome prince. Except Isabelle isn’t the beautiful girl who lost the glass slipper and captured the prince’s heart. She’s the ugly stepsister who’s cut off her toes to fit into Cinderella’s shoe … which is now filling with blood.
When the prince discovers Isabelle’s deception, she is turned away in shame. It’s no more than she deserves: she is a plain girl in a world that values beauty; a feisty girl in a world that wants her to be pliant.
Isabelle has tried to fit in. To live up to her mother’s expectations. To be like her stepsister. To be sweet. To be pretty. One by one, she has cut away pieces of herself in order to survive a world that doesn’t appreciate a girl like her. And that has made her mean, jealous, and hollow.
Until she gets a chance to alter her destiny and prove what ugly stepsisters have always known: it takes more than heartache to break a girl.
*MY THOUGHTS*
When this book first came out, I was a little iffy on it. I wasn’t sure what type of story the stepsister had to tell or even if I was interested in it because of how she’s portrayed in Cinderella. But as usual, there’s always two sides to every story and I’m glad we see that in this book.
Isabelle, the ugly stepsister of Cinderella is trying everything she can to make sure that she is the one who gets to marry the prince and not her stepsister…. Including cutting off her own toes. But as it so happens, the prince immediately discovers her lie and is shunned. Not just by the prince, but also by the town. As her family, now broke and shunned, tries desperately to hold on to everything, she gets the chance to wish for something she’s never had: to be pretty. But on her journey, she finds out that there’s way more to her than she thought.
The best thing about this book is the beginning. I was so intrigued and I loved seeing the way it tied in with the story, but as the book went on, I didn’t feel as intrigued with the story as I first did. The plot wasn’t moving as fast as it was and nothing was really happening. As it turns out, the story contains A LOT of moving parts that don’t come together until the very end. I almost missed out because I almost DNF’ed this, but I stuck with it. The plot is slow moving, but if you’re into that sort of thing, you may like it. I’m usually not, but I do love interesting re-tellings, so I think that’s where this one got me.
This book is also really character driven. The stepsister is trying her hardest to redeem herself and let the town know that she’s not as bad as they say she is. For the most part, she makes some really bad choices, but like I said, in the end things are different. As for the other characters, I didn’t really care for them. I felt like they didn’t matter as much and the focus was solely on the stepsister. As a book solely about her, that was ok, but with a slow moving plot, this got old pretty quickly.
So many people I’ve seen completely love this book, but I just couldn’t get that into it. The ending left room for it to be a series, so maybe I will try the next one, but I won’t be as excited for that one as I was for this one if so. This one was just too slow for me. I liked some points, but for the most part, it was just ok.
Overall, I give this
