Cordelia isn’t allowed to close the door to her room. 

 

As a matter of fact, there are no closed doors allowed in her house at all. It’s not as if she has any way of truly keeping her mother out anyway, not when her mother can directly affect her will and make her completely obedient without even raising a finger. 

 

Her mother is a sorceress, and Cordelia can’t remember a day when she didn’t cower in fear of her. Now it seems her mother is ready to instill that fear in others for the sake of money and she expects Cordelia to be obedient and do exactly as she says in the process. 

 

I found this book to be a great deal lighter than most of Kingfisher’s works (the ones I’ve read, at least), along with being a lot more jovial in tone. Normally I’d love this, but for some reason it just wasn’t working for me in this story. I usually love a juxtaposition of dark subject matter and humorous tone, but it felt (for lack of a better way to put it) like the angle these two things were meeting at was just off, somehow. Like it either wasn’t dark enough or wasn’t funny enough for the two to match up. As a result it ended up feeling rather awkward at times. 

 

The story itself was engaging and entertaining, certainly enough to sustain the book and make it worth the read. The characters were great too, if you take them out of their context and examine them just as characters. It’s when you put them all together that things start to fall apart. I think part of it has to do with how large the cast of characters is compared to the scope of the story. 

 

It’s hard to convey via text that I really did enjoy the story, even though I found a lot of flaws with it. It was overall a very enjoyable story. I do highly recommend it. Would I re-read it? Probably not. I also don’t think I want my own copy. But if you love fairy-tale retellings that aren’t spicy or Kingfisher then you’re likely golden. 

 

I was provided a copy of this title by Netgalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you. 

 

File Under: Coming of Age/Fairy Tale/Fairy Tale Retelling/Fantasy/Folklore