Review - Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly

Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly

Published 15th May 2019 by Hot Key Books

Star Rating - ****

Goodreads Challenge - 30/50

I was gifted a copy of this book from the publisher via Readers First.

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

'In an ancient city by the sea, three sisters - a maiden, a mother, and a crone - are drawing maps by candlelight. Sombre, with piercing grey eyes, they are the three Fates, and every map is a human life . . .'

Stepsister takes up where Cinderella's tale ends. We meet Isabelle, the younger of Cinderella's two stepsisters. Ella is considered beautiful; stepsister Isabelle is not. Isabelle is fearless, brave, and strong-willed. She fences better than any boy, and takes her stallion over jumps that grown men fear to attempt. It doesn't matter, though; these qualities are not valued in a girl. Others have determined what is beautiful, and Isabelle does not fit their definition. Isabelle must face down the demons that drove her cruel treatment of Ella, challenge her own fate and maybe even redefine the very notion of beauty . . .

Cinderella is about a girl who was bullied; Stepsister is about the bully. We all root for the victims, we want to see them triumph. But what about the bullies? Is there hope for them? Can a mean girl change? Can she find her own happily ever after?

My Thoughts

I was lucky enough to win a copy of this book from the publisher via Readers First and I was super excited to read it. For those who don't know, Readers First is a website in the UK which gives readers the opportunity to read and review extracts of the first few chapters of books in order to be entered into a draw to win a copy. After reading the extract of this one I was super intrigued and I was really excited to continue with the story. 

This book is a retelling of Cinderella but not one that you would normally expect. Instead of focusing on Cinderella we actually follow Isabelle, one of her 'Ugly Stepsisters'. The direction this story takes is really interesting, it gets quite dark in places when you think about how Isabelle is feeling but it is also extremely feminist and I love the way it tackles the way woman are treated and their expectations from others. The writing style was really compelling and the chapters are really short which made for intriguing story telling and I kept saying to myself just one more. I flew through sections of this book and I really didn't want to put it down. 

As I said before I loved how this tackled the treatment and expectations of woman. The setting of this book seems to be the classic setting of the original fairy tale, a time period in which the expectations of a woman is to be a house wife and child barer and to rely on a man to support them however, this was challenged by our main character and several side characters. Our main character Isabelle loves riding, fighting and learning about military history but she's pressured by her mother to become the woman shes expected to be and this causes her to develop some not very nice feelings towards others. The exploration of emotions in this book was really interesting and sometimes Isabelle's feelings became quite dark when she was exploring resentment, jealousy and anger. Over the course of the book Isabelle experienced some great character development and I loved watching her become the person she is at the end. 

Many of the other characters were really interesting too, all of them played their part and I didn't feel like any of them were put there just to further the story. I particularly enjoyed the interactions between The Crone and Chance, I thought this added another interesting layer to the story. Isabelle's sister Tavi was interesting too, she also didn't want to fit in with the societies expectations but instead of fighting she wanted to learn. I enjoyed the romantic aspects between Isabelle and Felix too, the reconciliation wasn't forced and has some nice development too it as well. 

Overall I enjoyed this book. It was a really unique and fresh take on a fairy tale retelling. I enjoyed the feminist aspects of this story as well as the exploration of feelings and character development. I really want the author to write some more retellings in this vain because I would definitely pick them up.

Overall Rating