Jennifer Donnelly (1) (1963–)

{My thoughts} – Have you ever been curious about what happened to Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters after her happy ending with the Prince? I have often put some thought towards it, I mean not everyone can always have a happy ever after. And honestly if you have read any of the original fairytales you know that they don’t all end happy.

This is a sort of different perception on the Cinderella story. However, it isn’t really based on Cinderella but her stepsisters Isabelle and Octavia as well as their mother. When Ella goes to live with the Prince a whole new timeline of events is created. Isabelle, Octavia and their Mother end up shunned because of the poor way in which they’d treated Ella.

They end up losing their house to a fire and forced to live with the neighbor in a hayloft. They are worked day in and night and barely fed and don’t have many clothes. However, they are sort of cared for. It’s almost like the roles reversed and by a cruel twist of fate they were now in Ella’s shoes before she’d left in a sense.

Isabelle has dreams, desires and wants. She doesn’t want to be doing what she is doing. She wants adventure, she wants more, but she’s not sure how to obtain what she wants. She ends up having a chat with the same Fairy that had helped Ella get to the ball. That fairy tells her she needs to find the three missing pieces of her heart. A majority of the book is her searching for those three pieces.

I really enjoyed this book a lot. I also loved how the ending was built up as pure chance. This book helps to show girls that they can and are capable of doing anything they’d like to with their lives. It shows them that they shouldn’t let the way that society thinks a girl should act to hold them back. It shows them, that when you truly follow your heart that you can be the best you. I think it’s got a great message and that many children can benefit from reading it. I look forward to reading more by this author in the near future.… (more)

First off I don't really enjoy the format or the fact that every two pages counts as a chapter and it kind of jumps between being a page and a chapter in itself. The format is really distracting and it makes reading the book feel like it's supposed to have some kind of poetry or prose but it doesn't.

So spoiler free review because this book is not good but I don't really feel like getting into the spoilers this round. It takes place after Cinderella gets married and it spins three to five chapters just describing how beautiful she is how wonderful she is how fabulous and gorgeous and everything is about her looks her appearance ... I get it, she's beautiful.

Once you move past this you get to the stepsisters both of which are so hideously ugly and hated by everyone that they won't even feed them their rotting food and when they finally do offer them rotting food they say that it's too good for them. One of which has cut off most of her foot as is in the original story of cinderella. And both are regarded as hideous monsters while Cinderella is this beautiful perfect being.

A being called Chance decides to alter the fate but he doesn't because this entire book nothing is actually changed it is and it isn't is constantly the answer if you want to know what happens that becomes such a great plot change there is a change and there isn't a change. It is and it isn't.

Nothing happens in this book that is of worth it's kind of one of those books that by the end you're stuck with barely anything happened and yet a tiny thing changed and we're supposed to celebrate that tiny victory while having read through this book and slogged through the massive setbacks in the lack of change in anything besides Cinderella being the most beautiful perfect person ever.

It was not a good read for me.

2 stars.… (more)

Wow. I don’t know what to say.
Sophie was too much in the beginning. Too soft, too silly, too naive. Too weak.
That is how the huntsman killed her so easily. That is how her heart was taken. That is how she died.
Princess Sophie died that day, but in place of her, someone else was born. Someone who was kind, but strong. Scared, but courageous. Doubtful, but determined.
It took a long time for it to happen. It felt slow at times. It felt like she’d never change.
But she did.
Her journey changed her. It shaped her into the woman she needed to be. She was not always that way, for she was born with a soft and tender heart. But the battles we fight strengthen us. The places we go teach us. And the lessons we learn change us.
That is what this book teaches us. That growth is a journey, and that we are more than what we think we are.
That day, when the huntsman took out her heart, the princess died. But someone else took her place. That someone was vulnerable and innocent. That someone did not know what to do.
But that someone found her way. That someone not only saved others, but herself.
That someone is a queen. The queen.
Princess Sophie may have died, but another Sophie took her place. Queen Charlotta-Sidonia Wilhelmina Sophia of the Greenlands. The rightful heir to the throne.
The one who would take back her crown.

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Anyways, that was my poetic way of describing what happened in the book. Here’s my shorter and less elegantly put (but more natural) version of my thoughts:
Okay, so I get why someone wouldn’t like this book, but I personally really liked it. This was a very poetically written book of the author’s beliefs such as kindness being strength and the like. As a poet, I thought it was really cool how the author wrote and made her point. It was just so poetic, and the way the author wrote will always leave me in awe. She really is incredibly talented.… (more)