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I wasn’t sure what I was going to think about this book. I’m not really big into fairy tale retellings, and I’m not necessarily big into retellings from the villain’s point of view, but this one still caught my interest. I’m glad I finally got to it, for it wasn’t what I was expecting.
Lady Tremaine is a realistic retelling of Cinderella, from the point of view of the stepmother. And here, she is not wicked. She is not bent on hurting her stepdaughter or deceiving anyone with ill intent. Ethel is simply a woman who has been widowed twice and left with nothing but a large old estate and no funds to keep it up or support her family.
Ethel has seen what the world does to women; she knows how it is to be a wife, to be dependent on men and have limited ways to take care of yourself. She knew love once, with her first husband, and she knows deep grief from the loss of that love far too young. Now, she has two beloved daughters and a stepdaughter, who has never welcomed her attempts to be there for her, whether as a mother figure or just an adult female in her life.
Elin keeps to herself in a tower in her late father’s old mansion and refuses to work alongside her stepmother, stepsisters, and two servants. She turns to her book of aphorisms for support, repeating platitudes about how to be a good wife. She is sure if she just follows the dictates of this little booklet left to her by her long-gone mother she will be able to be the perfect wife to a well-born man someday.
Ethel has worked for years to present herself and the girls as respectable, still well-to-do, and part of “polite society.” It’s the only thing she can do — the only way a woman can survive in her world is to marry well. So she has sold everything of value in the house except for a few items that remain in the most visible parts of the mansion. She works with the two remaining servants and goes hunting every morning with her falcon to try to provide her family with some meat. One of her daughters sews and reworks their dresses in the latest fashions. The other handles the finances and planning.
When they receive an invitation to a grand ball so the prince can choose a wife, Ethel knows this is what she has been working toward: the one opportunity to get her daughters provided for properly.
But she has to work even harder, create more subterfuge, more sleight-of-hand, to ensure they all look like well-born, respectable women. Ethel faces more difficulty each day, with each new revelation. But she does it, for the girls.
I love that in Lady Tremaine, the stepmother is not a villain. She is a smart, hard-working woman who lives in a difficult time and has to use every talent, every skill, every bit of cunning at her disposal to protect and ensure security for her daughters, including her stepdaughter.
This novel is very much about women’s power, their strength, their ingenuity — and a world that is bent on taking from them.
Very good.
Rated: Moderate. Profanity includes 2 uses of strong language (the c-word), a couple of instances of moderate profanity, and a few uses of mild language. Sexual content includes kissing. Any more is only implied. Violence includes multiple references to sexual assault, women being attacked by a man in various ways with the intent to hurt badly and at times to kill, a man being attacked by a bird and injured badly, at least one death.
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*I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
