Synopsis
You think you know Cinderella’s story: the ball, the magical shoes, the handsome prince.
You’re halfway right, and all-the-way wrong.
Ella is a haunting. Murdered at sixteen, her furious ghost is trapped in her father’s house, invisible to everyone except her stepmother and stepsisters.
Even when she discovers how to untether herself from her prison, there are limits. She cannot be seen or heard by the living people who surround her. Her family must never learn she is able to leave. And at the stroke of every midnight, she finds herself back on the staircase where she died.
Until she forges a wary friendship with a fairy charm-seller, and makes a bargain for three nights of almost-living freedom. Freedom that means she can finally be seen. Danced with. Touched.
Review
An extremely unique Cinderella retelling that combines haunting and ballet.
Ella’s father died of the poison in his tea, and she died soon after, only to become the house’s ghost to obey every order of her stepmother and step-sisters.
She was a girl, she was Ella, she was not just the potential for horror.
This is a magical novella. The aching to be seen, known, to experience, resonated with me (no, I am not a ghost). Especially with the added magic – fantastical and real – of the ballet in the latter half of the book (yes, I am an ex-dancer).
I will warn you that this is NOT primarily a queer romance.
It took me until the last few chapters to realise how the queer component came into play. I kept waiting for it due to the marketing, and felt slightly cheated that it felt like a fairy godmother’s fix to everyone’s problems at the end.
However, I would want to explore this world more. In such a short time, I was transported away.
What is it that you’re seeing in the dance? she would ask. Does it hurt you the same way it hurts me? And does that hurt feel so sublime that it keeps drawing you back, like the opposite of a warding?
A one-sitting read for an Autumn or Winter night.
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