Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

Cinderella is my least favourite fairy story/Disney film, mainly because the perfectly able MC lets herself be pushed around and literally sits in a pile of dirt moping about how unfair life is without actually doing anything to change her situation, before relying on first a fairy godmother and then a dude to pluck her from obscurity, all the while being judged purely in terms of her looks as opposed to her personality or intellect. 

Imaging my interest, therefore, when I read that this would be a vamped-up, feminist retelling of Cinderella with diverse characters. That’s more like it, I thought. 

It wasn’t the five star read I was hoping for. 

I loved the diverse characters. The MC, Sophia, was headstrong and stubborn and really didn’t want to marry a guy (what with being gay). She rushed into things without thinking at all, which was super frustrating.  She was in love with her childhood best friend, until she she gets dumped and meets Constance, who she falls in instalove with.  Like, literally one day after meeting her she’s all enraptured and has all but forgotten her previous love. 

The twist on the fairy godmother trope was really cool and the plot twist was unexpected. 

The biggest problem I had was that there wasn’t enough world building. I had no idea what was going on, beyond ‘It’s 200 years since Cinderella died and dudes pick wives depending onto posh their dress is’. I got the whole Men Are Evil Now thing, but the toxic masculinity was possibly the most heavy handed depiction I have ever read. The male characters completely lacked nuance, they were just pantomime baddies. And every single man, with the exception of maybe two of them, were outright horrors. Like, all they did was use, abuse and discard women, but no reason for the systemic abuse was given. 

This was a fairly good read, but for me the diversity was the best thing about it.  There could have been swathes of narrative taken out and replaced with some world building or layering of the baddies and this would have been an easy five stars. 

3 stars