My Five Word TL:DR Review: DIdn’t Quite Work For Me

Cinder House is a retelling of the Cinderella story with a twist in the tale.  It has all the components that you would expect.  The terrible stepmother and her ghastly daughters, a Prince who must choose a wife, a grand ball, a member of the fae (perhaps not a Godmother as such), time restrictions about returning home and one significant change that was interesting but that I won’t spoil here.

I can say, as it’s already mentioned in the description that at the start of the story Cinder dies and remains from that point forward a ghost, tethered to the house and with various restrictions.

I confess that the start of the story really intrigued me.  It takes a step away from the original story and I was very curious how things would play out – ultimately it’s probably this twist that presented me with mixed feelings.

In terms of what I enjoyed.

I do enjoy a good retelling and as I already mentioned this has all the components to make it a clear retelling.  The writing is solid, in fact I’ve read this author before and enjoy her style very much.

The characters come across as you might expect.  The stepmother is cold and calculating and completely lacking in emotion other than her ambitions for her daughters.  Her daughters – well, one has magic and is a horrible excuse for a human being, taking great delight in persecuting Cinder, the other sister isn’t quite as nasty.  The Prince – well, his tale also has a twist and also moves in a direction that I really didn’t foresee – and I’m sorry, but I’m not going to give away spoilers for that either.

What didn’t work quite so well for me.

I think first and foremost this is a novella.  I usually do avoid novellas because they don’t always have the depth that I’m really looking for, but, I do find that fairytale retellings can work well with a shorter length so, strictly speaking, perhaps this is more a ‘me’ issue.  The other issue is that, and again this is really down to me and personal preferences, but I kind of expect a fairytale to have a happy ending.  And, well, in some respects maybe this is a happy ending, it just didn’t quite work for me.  That being said, this is an easy, bite sized story that I can see plenty of other readers simply wolfing down.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks.  The above is my own opinion.

My rating 3 of 5 stars