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The Wronged Princess (Cinderella, #1)

Kae Elle Wheeler,

Kathy L. Wheeler

Discussion: Retelling & Fractured Tales

Why we're reading this: 09/18/22 nominated by Lisa
[close] 09/18/22 nominated by Lisa

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Retelling & Fractured Tales

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What Members Thought

May 24, 2013 Maki ⌒☆ rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2010-to-2019, kindle-cleaning, fairy-tale-retellings

The Wronged Princess had its moments, but it was very hard to ignore the various "t"s in it. "T'would", "t'was", "t'not"...I can understand using them in dialogue. When used that way, they lend an older world feeling to the characters using those phrases. All of the "t'woulds" were not regulated to the dialogue, though. They were used throughout the third person narrative, which was incredibly jarring as everything else was perfectly modern English.

It was the same with the occasional French phra The Wronged Princess had its moments, but it was very hard to ignore the various "t"s in it. "T'would", "t'was", "t'not"...I can understand using them in dialogue. When used that way, they lend an older world feeling to the characters using those phrases. All of the "t'woulds" were not regulated to the dialogue, though. They were used throughout the third person narrative, which was incredibly jarring as everything else was perfectly modern English.

It was the same with the occasional French phrases in the dialogue. Yes, Cinderella is a French fairy tale. The characters are French. We get it. But what's the point of having them say a phrase in French only to repeat the exact same thing in English directly afterwards? Nobody talks like that, when everybody else around them speaks the exact same language. I can understand that the reader might not necessarily understand French, but it just breaks down the fourth wall when the characters translate themselves.

The story helped make up for those problems, though, and is really the only reason I didn't give this book a two star rating - it gets more of low three. It gets points for being imaginitive.

The entire premise of the book is how ridiculous the idea of trying to find a specific woman by trying a shoe on everyone in a large kingdom is. And it was handled in a pretty amusing fashion. When the shoe fits someone other than his mystery princess, the prince realizes that he should probably put a bit more thought into things before acting.

I enjoyed the interactions between Cinderella and her stepsisters. It was heartening when they all banded together against Cinderella's stepmother, Hilda. She was incredibly evil. While she wasn't a very scary villain for them to fight against, there was definitely enough conflict between all three of them for it to work.

Most of the book was spent dwelling on the "Oh no! The Prince will have to marry Esmerelda, and he can't remember her name!" plot line, it was cute how it was finally all resolved. I loved Cinderella's jab at the Prince when he finally figured it all out.

That makes me wonder, though. Is his first name Prince? He's only ever referred to as Prince Charming, and whenever he's mentioned in the narrative, he's always just called "Prince".

...unless... >_>