Published: August 28, 2020
I loved this book! I don’t think a novella has left me with a book hangover before and this one did it. I couldn’t read another book for like two days after I finished this. And that’s a lot for me since I read every day. This is the first book in a series by Miranda Grant that are retellings of classic fairytales. This book is a Cinderella retelling and it was so different from the regular retellings that I am used to in the romance genre. In this one Ella isn’t a stepdaughter that no one wants but rather she is a slave to the Romans. She was captured as a child and sold into slavery for an sadistic Roman family. Instead of a fairy godmother, Ella makes a deal with a dark fae in order to kill the family and to finally be free with her love, Caderyn. However, she is inexplicably attracted to the fae and though she doesn’t want to be with him she cannot resist him. But that is pretty inline with all novels with the fae in them.
I won’t go into the storyline much more than that because I don’t want to give too much of it away. Grant definitely did not spare the reader the horrors of being a slave to the Romans and especially a woman slave. Though she doesn’t go into details the reader should be able to extrapolate and it isn’t pretty. I also think that Caderyn was a putz. Like he chose the master’s daughter over Ella even though he said that he loved her. She did everything for him and them and got nothing back in return. I did not like him at all. So though I don’t understand his draw he was a major catalyst in this book. We also get to see Delentia who you know of if you’ve read Grant’s War of Myth series. So I’m secretly hoping for a cross over at some point to take down Sebastian. Maybe? Maybe? Either way this book was so awesome you need to read it.
bookishlyromantic.com 