Step Sister

Title: Step Sister

Author: Jennifer Donnelly

Publisher: Hot Key Books
Year: 2019
Pages: 469

ISBN: 9781471407970
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy/ Retelling

Reading Time: 21 Oct - 2 Nov

Binding: Library Paperback

Goodreads

Stars:
★★★☆☆

Blurb: 

 CINDERELLA HAD HER HAPPY-EVER-AFTER . . .

 BUT WHAT ABOUT HER STEPSISTERS?

 This is stepsister Isabelle's story. Isabelle is brave and strong-willed - but not beautiful. And she has bloody feet from trying to fit into the glass slipper.

 But now Isabelle has a chance to alter her destiny and prove what ugly stepsisters have always known: it takes more than heartache to break a girl.

 Is there hope for bullies? Can a mean girl change? It's time for Isabelle to reclaim her own fate and she's leaving nothing to chance.

Review:

 This is an enjoyable retelling of a classical tale, taken from a different viewpoint and focusing on the 'after' of happily ever after. I've never read the Grimms' version of these fairytales but knew that Cinderella's stepsisters hacked off pieces of their feet to try and fit the glass slipper. This is where we begin in Step Sister.

 Isabelle is one of the ugly step-sisters, she and her sister Tavi are learning to adjust to that role in their new world without money, servant and a tarnished reputation. Ella is gone and the rumors of their treatment have spread the country to make them some of the most hated women in France. It's unhinged their mother and to make it worse, Isabelle and Tavi were not normal girls to begin with. They are warriors and academics rather than marriageable women of their time. Sounds like a good feminist setting, right?

 We have some interesting world building quickly take place in the characters of Fate, Chance and a fairy queen. I like that these added another layer to the story but little would have changed if they were written out or more purely metaphorical. Fate is determined to see Isabelle meets the dreary end written for her, Chance wants to give her the opportunity to escape is and the fairy queen . . . I'm not really sure what she was doing other than granting odd wishes in a strange way.

 When Isabelle learns that to become 'pretty' she must discover the missing pieces of her heart, she thinks of qualities and traits as most people would. The real pieces she must discover are far more literal which I don't really think makes much sense but perhaps that's because it's not quite the norm. There's a little action, a little romance but everything is just that, little.

 The story itself doesn't have an awful lot of movement, it's actually quite a short story. For some reason there are over 100 chapters and it really wound me up that there were constantly one or two page chapters following each other. It wasn't needed. Sentence structure was similarly short which made it seem to fit a far younger audience. 

 I just wish it had taken a darker and more sophisticated tone. We're starting off great with the Grimms' version of the tales and it just flattens out. Any tense moments that could have been built between the powerful characters such as Fate and Chance were ruined by asinine comments. We have moments of really lovely writing about the magic of the heart and self discovery and they just don't fit in the book at all because it screams of a message too old and wise to fit the rest of the text.

 A little bit of a let down in execution but it encourages me to find other retellings from other points of view.