Author: Ron Vitale
Title: Cinderella’s
Secret Diary: Lost
Series: Cinderella’s
Secret Diary(#1)
ISBN: 2940013032026
Publisher: Ron Vitale
(2011)
Disclaimer: Copy
received for review purposes.
| 
My rating: 2 of 5
stars
“What happened to Cinderella after she married the Prince? Set in the late 1700s as Napoleon is rising to power, Cinderella embarks on a journey of self-discovery as she tries to come to terms with her failed marriage and her inability to have a child. Torn between the Queen's insistence that she try all means necessary to conceive and her own desires, she agrees to travel to Paris to consult with a witch to help her become pregnant. Her journey leads her to find her long lost Fairy Godmother and aids her to solve the mystery behind her mother's death. Yet the Fey Lord, the Silver Fox, also takes notice in her and her world is suddenly turned upside down...” GoodReads’ blurb
When I was approached
about the chance to review a what-if follow up to the Cinderella fairy tale, I
pretty much jumped like a kid who’s been given a ton of candy. Unfortunately, I
found a number of issues that prevented this title from living up to my
expectations.
The story is a secret
diary in its purest sense: it has dated entries, and through them Cinderella
tries to reach her Fairy Godmother. The language was cared for and so
Cinderella writes in a way reminiscent of the historical period it has been assigned
to: Napoleonic wars. That was a nice touch.
About the storyline
itself, I think it can be divided in two parts: a first part, where Cinderella
is trying to reach her Fairy Godmother to escape her marriage, which turned out
to be a mistake, and a second part wherein she manages to escape and find her
Godmother – who is not who we are led to believe. The first part was more or
less enjoyable, a story about a naive girl who learns to open her eyes and
gather the courage to run off after a dream.
However, the second
pretty much ruined the book for me. There are witches, which I can understand.
There’s a strange connection between the real identity of the Fairy Godmother
and the spirits of the Apocalypse, which I can’t wrap my head about. In the
end, Cinderella solves her identity crisis and wins against her Fairy
Godmother, which solves the conflict and leaves me wondering more than ever
about the need for references of a spirit of War or of Napoleon hooking up with
Clopatra in Egypt.
The second half also
shifts the conflict from Cinderella, the Queen and the Prince (the characters I
care about, and my favorite ones –the Queen rocks, actually-) to Cinderella,
her dead mother and her old lover, a witch she abandoned at some point before
Cinderella herself was born. I hope you understand why it threw me so
completely off the hook.
Beyond the story not
being what I hoped for, though, my major complains are repetition and a problem
of coherence:
We’re reading
diaries, yes, but that doesn’t mean that they should read as if they were real
diaries – you know, those entries where you write what comes to mind, repeat the
same idea in different ways, and let your train of thought wander off as it
will. It’s like dialogue: you want it to sound real, but you never write down
the silences, stuttering, or ‘y’knows’.
The coherence issue
became apparent when the Prince was described as cleanly shaved and as sporting
a couple of days’ worth of scruff in the same paragraph. I didn’t take notes,
but another example that comes to mind is the glass slippers that get stuck in
Cinderella’s feet because of a spell towards the end, then she’s barefoot, then
they’re back.
The moral behind this
novel is the one thing that is clear: how Cinderella must stand up for who she
is, without looking for support in the way of love. To convey this message,
Cinderella had to start as a very naive, whiny and dependant woman, I
understand that much, but I have to admit that understanding didn’t prevent me
from finding her too weak, and too slow to smart up. How did she survive living
under her stepmother and her stepsisters? How could she learn nothing from
their machinations? How could she go through such period without finding some
core of inner strength?
In any case, while
the message itself about standing up for oneself as a woman is clear, I’m not
sure I like the hint that such strength can be found only by standing alone – I’d
have loved it if, instead, she had found a balanced, healthy, but oh, well. That’d
be a different story, I guess.
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