JoRead

I’ll say this, that cover is captivating and the blurb intriguing; the story in itself warrants props for making the heroine some kind of anti-hero with internal conflict for loving the enemy and betraying her kind. But, and sorry if there is a but, it's not all it's cracked up to be.

We have “Ella” who is in fact an assassin sent to kill her people’s worst enemy, or rather, to kill the one person that according to prophesy will be the end of them all. We meet her at what appears to be the end of a ball, hence the reference to Cinderella and a prince. The prince wants to live a normal life thus prefers to travel with no guard even though they all know they are hired assassins out to get him. As fate would have it, Ella the greatest and best of the assassins sent, makes a life changing decision that alters the lives of everyone in this world.

So, as I was reading this story and I kept putting it down, I just kept thinking: it’s a decent story, why do I keep dozing off? Why doesn’t it hold my interest? And so it hit me, it’s not the story, or the plot, it was the narrative. More than half the time it was told in a passive voice and told at a rather slow pace. I had a hard keeping track of the characters not because there were too many of them but because they all showed up at random times with no previous introduction. During dialogue, the conversation was separated by quotation marks but it was not acknowledged who had made the talking until later and well, by that time I had already lost track of what had been said.

Perhaps I’m just not used to this kind of writing. I mean, I’m no expert and although I consider myself an avid reader I don’t think I’ve ever come across a book told in this manner. I suppose other fantasy lovers may enjoy it if they find this kind of prose engaging. As it is, I can only give it 3 stars and only because I found the plot to be imaginative but that’s really pushing it.