B+
Genre: Fantasy/Fairy Tale Romance, LGBTQIA, Novella, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Theme: Retelling
Cinder House is such a clever, inventive, re-imaging of Cinderella! This novella stuffs in a lot at the last minute, but other than that, it’s perfect.
Here is how the book begins. It’s not a spoiler – I’m literally quoting the first words of the book.
Ella’s father died of the poison in their tea. Ella drank less and so might have lived, and not turned ghost at all, if the house hadn’t shrieked for its master’s murder in the moments she stood, dizzied and weak, at the top of the stairs.
Ella falls down the steps and becomes a ghost who inhabits the house – and who, in a sense, is the house, tormented by any damage that the house experiences. Her step-family, especially her step-sister Greta, uses this affinity to force her to clean, cook, and wait on them. As the owners of the house, they are the only people who can see or hear her. After many years, Ella learns how to leave the house by holding one of its roof tiles in her hand, but every night at midnight she finds herself back on the stairs where she died. She even makes two friends – one a pen pal, and the other an old woman who sells charms.
How this story plays out and resolves is a delight – a really deft mix of horror, magic, and romance. The inclusion of bisexuality and polyamory allows for some unexpected developments. And the quality of the writing is sublime. Here’s a description of the food at the ball:
Halved quail eggs, their gold centers darkened with spice and draped with pickled onion. A savory paste on small square toasts. Buttery shortbreads shaped like flowers. Skewers of cubed fruit sprinkled with coarse salt. Grilled vegetables rolled up around soft cheese and pepper. It was all Ella could do to remember to swallow; she needed to hold all the tastes in her mouth and compare them to house-tastes like beeswax rubbed into wooden chairs or the drift of steam above unfurling tea leaves.
The only issue I had with this book is that it gets pretty crowded. There’s a slow build and then my goodness things get added to the narrative quickly and a lot happens fast. This is not an unusual problem for a novella but it’s unfortunate – I liked each individual component of the story but they were too plentiful for such a short book.
Overall this is one for the keeper shelf. I loved this take on a story that we’ve heard again and again. I would have thought that every version must have been explored by now but this interpretation is very fresh and new and emotionally moving. It will keep you reading well past midnight!
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Cinder House by Freya Marske
– Carrie S
Sparks fly and lovers dance in this gorgeous, yearning Cinderella retelling from bestselling author Freya Marske—a queer Gothic romance perfect for fans of Naomi Novik and T. Kingfisher.
Ella is a haunting.
Murdered at sixteen, her ghost is furiously 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.
You think you know Ella’s the ball, the magical shoes, the handsome prince.
You’re halfway right, and all-the-way wrong.
Rediscover a classic fairy tale in this debut novella from “the queen of romantic fantasy” (Polygon).
Fantasy/Fairy Tale Romance, LGBTQIA, Novella, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy
This book is available from:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well.
Thanks!
I agree on all counts, great review of a great novella that (like all novellas) I really wish had been a full sized book. The ending in particular I could have really rolled around in a lot longer. I don’t mean to imply that it was in any way lacking – Marske absolutely delivered a great ending with all the things I knew I wanted and several I hadn’t even thought to hope for, it’s just I could have gone on reading about it for idk five to seven volumes or thereabouts. But then it was all gone and there was nothing more and I had to go find something inevitably less satisfying to read, and while wildly unfair, it’s hard not to hold that against her.
As someone who is attracted to all the paranormal horror things but has almost zero ability to actually tolerate it, I found this creepy but not unbearably so. I was worried at a couple points it would give me nightmares but it didn’t, so maybe comparable to something like T Kingfisher’s A House with Good Bones? Or maybe one of KJ Charles’s Green Men books? Definitely would not have pushed myself to risk it if I hadn’t read and liked all Marske’s published and AO3 stuff already, but I went in feeling confident it would be worth it, as indeed it was.
On my TBR!
Trigger warning for bullying and physical abuse. This is very much not the Disney version and gets Grimm at times.