I was torn between giving this book a 3 or a 4, but I have decided to go for 3 because there are simply two large things (and some smaller ones) I think lessened the enjoyment of the story for me in too significant of a way for me to ignore.

The first and third acts were pretty well-paced and tense and engaging in their own ways. They were quite well done. However, I also felt like the first act was too long, but maybe that was just my imagination due to a much more prevalent issue, which was:

The second act was way too weak. This book doesn't have a saggy middle, not really, but compared to all that happens in acts I and III, act II was so painfully mid (no pun intended). While there was clear progression of plot and there wasn't really any fluff or padding, the events that transpired were just boring and uninspired, and felt like they should have been a small part of it rather than the entire journey for the main characters. While I don't expect every fantasy to be epic, I expect the middle part of each book, that's supposed to be the longest, to have a lot more stuff going for it that what we got here. The character's journey from act I to act III was felt like barely anything happened outside of one or two major things (

meeting the "fairy godmother" and raising the corpse of Cinderella, which, by the way, felt completely pointless in the grand scheme of things as she just told them to find her journal and that's it. The journal didn't even tell us what we didn't already know. Total waste, especially since her name is literally in the title and she is mythicised in their kingdom. That's like raising Cleopatra and all she has to say is "you have to stop him! you're in danger!" Much info. Very helpful.

)

The second biggest issue with this story might just be from the fact that this book is YA, and it reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally shows. I don't know if younger readers aren't able to understand nuance and character complexity, but much like a lot of other YA books that mock teenages' intelligence, the way the theme is presented is painfully black and white. Every single character is either good or downright evil. The theme is all about oppression of women and patriarchy dialed up to a hundred, and I don't wanna say that people can't get super abusive and evil given enough power and freedom to do so, but it just made for a less interesting story (to me) when it's just a very classic struggle of good vs evil instead of something more interesting and mature like exploring patriarchy in all the various benevolent and malevolent ways it can manifest in people's lives. But the author wanted to present this theme in a simpler manner, which is a choice, but I feel like even for a YA audience, it could have have used at least a couple more shades of gray. The closest thing we get to it is a short discussion between the MC and a

gay

boy about how

even men who don't conform in this kingdom have it easier than women who refuse to conform to the rules and societal expectations set by them by their one-dimensional evil king

. Heck, men and people of other genders suffer under patriarchy, too, and could have been interesting to explore. But we just get a very one-note, black and white story about how men oppress women. I'm a (cis) woman myself by the way if by any chance you might think my opinion to not hold the same value if I were a man or something. And don't get me wrong, I love feminist stories like this that are all about "down with the patriarchy." I just think that it's not just lazy but potentially harmful to just show the worst of the worst men who overtly abuse women as the only offenders when it only goes to confirm the incorrect notion that someone can only be doing something bad if it's as horrible as physical abuse or murder or something. But since most guys are probably not gonna read this, I guess it doesn't matter that much, which is a shame because I think when we speak about societal issues like the patriarchy, even young people should be taught that there are certain nuances to it. Kids aren't dumb, they just don't have the vocabulary and experience to draw from like their older counterparts to understand certain concepts that require prior knowledge of something. Kids need to be challenged. Pure black and white theming like this is not good enough, in my opinion.

All in all, I'm really sad at how disappointing this book was for me when the cover and the title  and even the premise of a story taking place in the same universe as a fairy tale but some time after it were so damn intriguing. But sadly even the details around the fairy tales that were used and/or changed wasn't done as creatively or in as interesting of a way as I had hoped, especially the "true" story of Cinderella. It was basically just

"Cinderella and the stepsisters and the stepmother didn't hate each other actually, they loved each other. Insert that 'everbody so creative' meme."

And like I said, I love stories that are about dunking on the patriarchy. I feel like this book could have been so much more if the second act had more things happen and was more fleshed out, and the characters and theme wasn't so oversimplified to just a battle between good and evil. And although I don't feel like it was foreshadowed well enough, I do like the twist that

the fairy godmother/witch is actually the king's mother, as my own mother is also the kind of person who gives preferential treatment to the child of the opposite sex at the expense of girls and women, including her own daughter

.

I say it's worth a read as it just feels to me like a very cultural book that almost everyone should read, but just don't expect too much depth or creativity/entertainment from it.