Blog Tour: Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Baron

Hello and welcome to my first blog tour of the year. If you are new to my blog Hi! If you aren’t welcome back.

This book has been haunting me for sometime. Before I was accepted for the blog tour I was two minutes to midnight on pre-ordering this bad boy! It has a lot of good stuff in it! Fairytale retellings? Check. LGBT antics? Check Poc Queer lead? Check Morally grey magic character? Check Revolution? Check. Let’s go through it.

Cinderella Is Dead is set 200 years after Cinderella has died. The King runs Lille with an iron fist and it is the most patriarchal society imaginable. Every year there is a ball where girls need to be chosen or they are forfeit. It’s a hideous concept and one that is genuinely quite freaky.

Sophia our heroine is headstrong and gay as hell which we love to see! She is hopelessly in love with Erin and is slowly finding out that there are more gay people in Lille even though it is banned. It all comes to a head when she escaped the ball and meets a very badass redhead.

This book really surprised me quite a few of the recent fairy-tale retellings haven’t done it for me. This book is a very similar style of retelling to The Surface Breaks by Louise O Neill although I’d argue its better in execution.  The idea of Cinderella being used as a state text is so cool and different.

I also loved the justifications for some of the characters. How traditional villains were turned into heroes and how all the good characters in the story turn out to be very different. Also there is a twist that made my head spin in the best way possible.

In terms of cons I say the ending was very neat. Almost too neat. It just tied up perfectly which did irritate me a bit. I’d also say Sophia’s constant pursuit of Erin did get quite annoying as I felt we never really saw Erin like her much. It felt more like a crush rather than anything else. I’d also say there was a lot of talking that closed up things so conversations almost felt too clean. Everyone justifies their emotions in a way that felt clinical.

Overall though this is a fantastic retelling. I really loved some of the twists in it and I the central romance is fantastic. Other fairy tales are mentioned so I do wonder if the author will ever explore those.

 Thanks for having me on the tour!