Rating: 2/5
Spoiler Alert! This review will contain spoilers for the end of the book.
You know those books that are just all over Instagram? The one's that aren't just appearing in ads, but being backed by bookstagrammers, people who are excited to read it and make it sound like something unmissable?
Cinderella is Dead was absolutely one of those books for me.
It was everywhere.
I fell in love with the cover as much as the blurb; a beautiful recreation of the classic Cinderella gown, a badass stance, and an unreletning gaze from a beautiful protagonist. In fact, it could be one of my favourite YA covers at the moment.
I just wish the writing lived up to it...
Cinderella is Dead has a great main plotline, some weak side characters, and a whole heap of wasted potential.
One of the biggest reasons I failed to be immersed in the narrative is a complete lack of world-building. Settings were barely described, and it was hard to understand the supposed wealth of families when their homes were barely described (for example, Sophia's family seemed relatively poor, and yet they owned multiple carriages and a horse. This could have been normal, but without explanation, this was lost on me). I also questioned who Eric and Liv were, and why Sophia was friends with them - was there some form of school the girls attended? Did they work together? The narrative seemed to begin before it was ready to - just an extra 20 pages could have cleared up many questions I had about Mersailles.
It may have taken slightly more, however, to clear up my questions about the King/monoarchical rule of the country. There was a brief bit explaining that the king was chosen from some far away land, that it was a man trained all his life to be king. But why? Why did the people accept this? Why was there never any successor - or rather, any suspiscion of the lack of successor? It felt like there should be more explanation on this front, rather than blind acceptance on the part of the people.
Along with the world-building, the pace of this book doesn't allow for the narrative to fully come into itself. Relationships and emotions felt rushed, a heavy-handedness ruining all the clever things that were trying to happen. Both Erin and Luke felt like uneccesary characters, introduced more as plot devices than anything else. In Luke I saw a true ally, someone willing to fight for the cause...but he disappeared from the narrative, only to reappear at the end and do nothing of use. Erin was nothing but a device - she was the person Sophia loved and a display of male power, nothing more. She was also so unlikeable that I couldn't understand why someone as brave and reckless as Sophia would ever love her.
The best part of this book came just 50 pages from the end, when we learn the truth about Amina and King Manford. This was the only thing in the book that I didn't predict or put together myself, before Sophia did....and yet, when I paused to think about it for just a couple of minutes, I realised even this plot point had holes in it. Why were we meant to care? How did Manford originally die as a young man? Why did Amina bring him back to life, using such a dark form of magic? What was Maford's motivation in the first place? If there had been time to connect with this part of the story, to understand some of the "evil" forces, I think I could have forgiven some of the more predictable elements of the story. Instead, he was evil for the sake of being evil and Amina just kind of...existed.
The whole plot just felt lacklustre by the end, even in the most action-packed scenes. Nothing felt all that deep, and I had no emotional ties to anything. I enjoyed the final fight scene, but the section afterwards felt rushed, as if it needed to end in some way that showed not everyone accepted change but ultimately it was a "happy ever after" moment.
To sum up my thoughts, Cinderalla is Dead was an average 300 page book which could have been a brilliant 500 page book. It's frustrating to see so much potential go unfulfilled, but I can see why some would identify with the narrative and commend Bayron on the story she is trying to tell.