This book was not on my TBR. I’ve been struggling with reading lately, and while I’m out of the slump I was in for most of 2023, I’m still not quite to the same level I’m used to being on.
As a way to get myself back into reading, I opened my Libby app and scanned their selection of what was available. Unfortunately for me, most of the books I was interested in have long wait times. This is good news for the library, but not for me.
This book was one of the few that was ready pretty quickly. I wasn’t expecting much from this book going in, but I do love a good retelling, especially when they’re a little twisted, and this book was certainly that.
The story starts after the well-known fairytale ends: Prince Charming has swept Cinderella off her feet, away from the tyranny of her wicked stepmother and into the halls of the palace; into happily ever after. Right?
Wrong. Because the prince doesn’t know that his new fiancée, the lovely Lady Aislinn, is not the perfect angel she’s made herself out to be.
First, she prefers to be called “Ash.”
Second, Everett didn’t save Ash from her abusive family, she seduced him using magic–something incredibly difficult to do and even harder to maintain–through her stepmother’s training and planning.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, there’s a subjugated kingdom Ash has been tasked with freeing. Or assisting in freeing.
Her controlling stepmother sent her to the palace to secure a place of nobility, status, and security for the rest of her scheming step family, but her grandmother’s rebel faction is using Ash’s proximity to the prince and king to influence the renegotiations of an important peace treaty.
All the characters are exactly who you expect them to be at first glance: the wicked stepmother, the petulant stepsisters, the charming prince, even Cinderella herself. But the book quickly flips that on its head to show you the truths of the typical villains and the darker sides of the would-be heroes.
The stepsisters are just as trapped and abused as Ash, Prince Everett is a chivalrous misogynist, and the stepmother is a product of a harsh, unrelenting upbringing.
Torn between the demands of her stepmother who wants nothing but control, a king who thinks she’s a spy, her fiancé who can’t seem to see past her womanhood, and her own feelings for the wrong prince, Ash knows that she can trust no one and must rely on her skill and intuition alone to survive.
It’s a catchy premise, sure, but I feel like the ending robbed me of something. In obtaining happily ever after, Ash leaves everything she’s worked for in the hands of those who created the problem to begin with.
And maybe that’s the point: maybe they all break free from the pressures and obligations that drive them throughout the novel. But the way it’s done makes the ending feel cheap instead of triumphant to me.
Set in a fantasy world reminiscent of industrial-age England where magic is a coveted commodity, this novel compares and contrasts the worlds of the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, and the determined and the apathetic.
I give this book three stars.
It’s marketed as a Cinderella heist novel, and while it certainly plays off the Cinderella fairytale in refreshingly gritty fashion, there isn’t a lot to recommend it as a heist novel. Sure, there are plenty of schemes and plots, but she doesn’t steal anything. Sorry, Aislinn, Liar and Lady you may be, but Thief, you are not.
However, don’t let that misnomer keep you from reading the book. The schemes and plots are good, the characters are well-balanced for villainy, virtuosity, and vagrancy in turn, and the emotional and sexual tension will keep you reading long into the night. No thefts needed.
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Thank you for reading!
Unscripted Endeavors 
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