This review contains affiliate links, which earn me a small commission when you click and purchase, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my small business and allowing me to continue providing you a reliable resource for clean book ratings.
Isabelle, one of Cinderella’s stepsisters, once cut off her toes to fit into Ella’s shoe in an attempt to win the handsome prince. When the truth was discovered, she was turned away in shame.
Now the villagers call her ugly. Perhaps she deserves it. She’s a plain girl in a world that values beauty and a feisty girl in a world that wants her to be pliant. Even though Isabelle has tried to fit in — to live up to her mother’s expectations, to be like her perfect stepsister — she’s failed miserably. She let pieces of herself be cut away in order to survive in a world that doesn’t appreciate or want a girl like her, and it made her mean, jealous, and hollow. It turned her into someone she hates.
When she crosses paths with the fairy queen one dark night — the same fairy queen who granted Ella her heart’s desire — Isabelle is offered a wish, but only if she can first find the missing pieces of her heart.
Isabelle doesn’t know it, but time is running out. Unless she can find the missing pieces of her heart — whatever they are — and alter her destiny, she will become just another casualty in the war that is encroaching on her village and tainting her own chance of a happily ever after.
Stepsister reads like a classic, dark fairy tale, and while a little odd, it hides a powerful lesson revealed through the life of an ugly, overlooked stepsister. When Isabelle cuts off her toes, she begins to realize how far she’s fallen and how far she’d been willing to go to live up to the expectations of her overpowering mother and the critical times. The message is clear: In a society that tells you you’re not important or lack worth if you aren’t pretty or if you’re life isn’t picture-perfect, learn to stand up for yourself, to forgive and not become bitter, to follow your dreams even if they aren’t deemed normal, and to be proud of who you are and how far you’ve come.
Rated: Mild, for a few uses of mild language, a handful of moderate language, and a couple of instances of God’s name in vain. The main character cuts off her toes (it’s not too graphic, but it’s bloody and might be unsettling for some readers). There is one crude sexual remark from a man who ogles a woman for her shape. Two characters kiss.
