This is one of those times I wish it was customary for all published books to have AO3-style warning. Meanwhile, I suppose I should be more careful about reading reviews before I crack a book open and not trusting first impressions.

This book, at first, gave me the impression of being a fairly hopeful f/f Cinderella retelling. It has a beautiful cover, a blurb that doesn't seem to hint at any particularly dark things, and a nice, fairy-talish start with some vague The Secret Garden vibes that might be just in my head. But once the plot starts unfolding in earnest, after the main character's father dies and her evil stepsister pushes her into the role of the servant, a lot of darkness creeps in. There's basically a lot of rape in this book, and even though there are no particularly graphic scenes and nothing like that happens to the main character herself, there's still... a lot. And yes, there's a supposedly sweet romance here, but it's happening aganst the backdrop of the MC's friends constantly getting raped, the MC being in danger of a similar fate or death and frequently suffering torture, and the LI being very sad it's happening. As a result, what could have perhaps been a sweet love story reads like a very shallow one, based more on a combination of mutual lust and just wanting something good for a change than on the deep real feelings the leads are supposedly experiencing toward each other.

I did enjoy the writing, some of the characters (the cats!), and the worldbuilding, as well as the way the author incorporated bits of lesser known fairytales, such as Scarlet Flower (the Russian version of Beauty and the Beast, essentially), and I might want to check out the rest of the series... after attentively reading the reviews.

Read for the following September 2020 readathons:
- I Read Sins Not Tragedies: Plant on the Cover
- CoffeeReadathon: Witchy Vibes
- Mythothon3: Beautiful Cover
- Demonathon: Pretty Cover