City News

In the Cinderella fairy tale, Cinderella is married to a kind, chivalrous prince that whisks her away from her depressing house and family. 200 years later, the story is still celebrated and idealized obsessively by the people of Lille, but chivalry and kindness is the last thing to expect out of marriage. Every year, a celebration is hosted by the king where teenage girls dress in their finest clothing and are presented for the men of the kingdom to choose from. The chosen girls are instantly married off to their husbands, where they can expect the rest of their life to be lonely and miserable. Men can treat their wives however they’d like without consequence and the women are powerless to stop it. Girls in the ceremony that aren’t picked after attending the ceremony for a few years are simply never seen again. So for most girls, securing a non-abusive husband is their only worry. But what if Sophia Grimmins wants to marry her childhood best friend, Erin? Of course, her plan is for them to flee Lille together, but girls that are caught deserting the town’s lives are at forfeit, so Erin decides to conform and accept a life of misogyny instead. Sophia leaves the town on her own on the night of the celebration instead, where she meets Constance, a descendant of Cinderella’s stepsisters. Sophia soon discovers that there is more to the Cinderella tale than the glorified story she was raised on. Together, Constance, Sophia, and a slightly psychotic fairy godmother form a plan to murder the king and bring down the patriarchy.

Cinderella is Dead was a fast-paced novel with many intriguing plot twists with a world that reflects our own. It’s not just a story about female empowerment, but also a story about queer joy. The book had a gothic, twisted fairytale vibe with horrific undertones that completely enthralled me. My favorite character was Sophia because she represented courage and empowerment, despite living in a hopeless community surrounded by unhappy marriages. She had the self confidence to love who she loved and leave a town that had never been left before, but she also lacked any sense of self preservation, which was annoying on multiple instances when she was punching men in power and barging in on houses belonging to witches. Sometimes, she also seemed like a cardboard cutout main character recycled from previous YA books to have the same determination and motives, rather than an original character. The antagonist, an evil king, wasn’t much better. His motivation was the same as any other villain and he came out seeming like a half-baked cartoon bad guy. I loved how the author took a common troupe and put it in a diverse perspective, but the story was slightly predictable and the main character’s actions were questionable. On multiple occasions, plot twists came that I had seen coming from pages back. Finally, the only universal theme the book seemed to have was just your average “down with the patriarchy!” which there’s nothing wrong with, I just expected more from a book with such an interesting premise. Also I felt like throughout the book, the author was trying to teach me the dangers of sexism, as if this book is aimed at misogynist men, which I can guarantee is not the target audience. Instead of being cleverly woven into the story, the theme was shouted at me and repeated. Over and over again. 

Spoiler alert: Farther into the book, Constance becomes Sophia’s new love interest and their romance is less of a romance and more of a plot device designed to give Sophia confidence and to get her over Erin. Constance barely has a personality and Sophia is in love with her for absolutely no reason, besides some cute shared moments. While the book was slow and already had some unnecessary parts, this romance definitely could have done with more page time and development. 

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in a gothic, chilling, dystopian fairy tale with queer romance that is relatively quickly paced. It is a book that sucks you in and keeps you turning pages up until the very end.

Check out Cinderella is Dead from the Newport Beach Public Library!