Cinderella is Dead: Book Review

Plot summary for Cinderella is Dead

Cinderella is dead, but her story lives on. The teenage girls of Lille are obliged, by law, to follow in her footsteps. They present themselves at the annual ball and hope to be beautiful enough to attract a husband. If they fail to appeal to the men present, they are forfeit, and many are never seen again. It’s a perilous situation, but the stakes are even higher for Sophia, who doesn’t want to marry a man. She wants to be with Erin, the girl she has loved for the last three years. But can one headstrong young woman make a difference to two centuries of tradition?

Content warnings for Cinderella is Dead:

• Homophobia
• Sexism
• Domestic and sexual abuse

My thoughts on Cinderella is Dead

Cinderella is Dead is the debut novel by Kalynn Bayron, and it’s a retelling of the classic Cinderella fairytale. It takes on the story through a new and exciting lens, with a black and queer protagonist, and sets out to tear down the patriarchy. It’s built on a strident criticism of misogyny and homophobia, and has female/female romance at the heart of the story. All of which combined meant that I was so excited for this book! Ultimately though, I didn’t feel like it lived up to my expectations.

The worldbuilding and sense of stakes or urgency felt shaky

I appreciate this isn’t the case for everyone, but I love worldbuilding in the stories I read. Whether it’s a wholly new universe or just a new take on the world we live in, I love getting to grips with an imaginary setting. And it seemed like there was a lot of unrealised potential when it came to the worldbuilding in this book. We basically just got the bare minimum of information about how society operates. A lot of time was spent on preparations for the ball, how that worked and what it meant. But then the ball itself seemed to be over quite quickly, leaving us with a flimsy sense of the world beyond this one event.

Another thing bothering me about the setting was that, to me, the misogyny felt exaggerated to the point of caricature. This made it hard to take the villains seriously at points. Rather than it being the kind of pernicious, under the radar sexism that is so difficult to challenge, it just felt like we were in the realm of ‘men are irredeemably evil’. While in theory this raised the stakes for our female protagonist, it didn’t have that effect for me. Also, we found out pretty early on that Sophia’s sexuality wasn’t as secret as she thought it was, which undercut the stakes around that quite a bit! This was a secret that, in theory, could put her life at risk. The fact that someone she barely knows is aware of it seems like it should be a much bigger deal than the writing indicated.

I mostly liked the characters in Cinderella is Dead

The main character was a mixed bag for me. She was definitely brave, and willing to act fast when the moment called for it. But when we open up the book, she’s been desperate to get out for years and has absolutely no plan for making that happen. It would have been nice to see her demonstrate more agency! Rather than just going along with everyone else’s plans all the time, which felt like what she mostly did.

I really liked elements of Sophia’s character. Her determination to be her own hero, rather than relying on somebody else, her utter certainty about who she was and what she wanted… I just wish we’d got to know her better through the story.

It also would have been nice to get more of an insight into some of the secondary characters. Luke was a really interesting character, introduced very early on. Unfortunately we didn’t see nearly as much of him as I was hoping to! Constance seemed cool, but I felt we only got to know her pretty superficially.

This also gets to another thing that bothered me while reading. It felt like there was a lot of telling, where I’d have liked to be shown more. We know Sophia is in love with Erin because she says so, we don’t see much reason for them to be together. Erin mostly seems to be irritated by Sophia’s resistance to the social order, and there’s not much sign of softness or affection there. And then she meets somebody else, and that relationship develops in a way that felt kind of rushed. It would have been nice to see Sophia’s feelings growing, and to see their interactions develop over the course of their time together.

The pacing of the book seemed to fall off a bit in the second half

Time starts moving pretty strangely in the story after Sophia’s escape from the ball. I was often not entirely sure how long they were meant to be taking to travel or how long they were staying in various places. The pacing felt a bit wonky, and so the sense of urgency that we have around the one-third mark ebbed away almost completely.

That, combined with a lack of clear direction in the plot, lead to a second half of the book that didn’t feel like it was building coherently to a point. Sophia had an objective, but she didn’t have a strong sense of how she was going to achieve it. Which made it hard to really get excited about or invested in what was going to happen.

In conclusion…

I came into Cinderella is Dead ready to be blown away, and so ended up disappointed. It’s great that we have a YA fantasy with a queer, black, female protagonist. I love that she’s brave and determined and refuses to tolerate injustice. More than anything, I wish we’d had a story that showcased her better. I wanted to know more about Sophia, and the world she inhabited. I wanted to understand more about the system she existed within. And I wanted to get swept up in a believable female/female romance. For me, the book fell short on those fronts.

If you’re looking for a fantasy with a headstrong female lead who you can get to know on a deeper level, I’d point you towards two of my favourite reads from this year: A Song of Wraiths and Ruin (for a YA fantasy) or The Poppy War (if you’re ready for something with a lot more violence). While neither of those have the queer representation that I was so excited for in Cinderella is Dead, I do think they’re better reads on the whole.