3.25/5. Releases 11/10/2023.

Vibes: ~it's a Cinderella story~, light sapphic love, actual? royalty? in fairy tales? a la Ever After, and instalove

Cynthia suffers through drudgery, doing whatever her stepmother and stepsisters demand. Then an Italian prince sweeps into town, ready to search through all unwed maidens in his quest for a suitable wife. But Cynthia doesn't care about the prince; she cares about Princess Ammalia, his charismatic sister. And after they meet, nothing, including her stepmother and stepsisters, is going to stop Cynthia from finding the princess at the ball.

This one is a short book (basically a novella) and those are hard to balance; I always have to give people credit for swinging at a believable love story in such a short amount of page time. And in many ways, it works here. It's charming, the lovers are sweet. I would definitely recommend this to people looking for a quick, happy sapphic fairy tale read. For me... I kind of wanted a little more, and maybe unrealistically so (I missed this being around 100-150 pages when I requested it, which is on me). But overall, I'd say it's pretty solid, even if it doesn't go quite as hard as I prefer.

Quick Takes:

--I actually really liked that this was set in a solidly real world. It reminded me of Ever After, and honestly? The prince and princess being Italian made sense--they could be royals without quite as many implications and responsibilities as a member of the British royal family would have had at the time. Something about that just added to it for me; and I think it was especially useful for the novella format, as you don't need quite as much worldbuilding when it's set in... well, our world.

--Ammalia and Cynthia do kind of fall in love pretty quickly. While instalove often doesn't work for me, I'm not inherently against it; it can be done well, and indeed, it's kind of hard to avoid in a book this short (though it can be avoided). And shit, if you can have instalove in a million different m/f books, I'm certainly not going to knock a sapphic Cinderella retelling for having it. Cynthia and Ammalia have a cute chemistry, and honestly, I was down. Is this the deepest romance I've ever read? No. But were you looking for that from a quick, easy fairy tale retelling? I wasn't.

--I think where I struggled a little was that Erica Ridley's voice is very relaxing and nice, but it's not super distinct. I wonder a little what someone like Tessa Dare would've done with this concept--simply because she does have a very strong authorial voice, and I think that's really helpful when you're writing something a little shorter. Tessa's voice naturally does a lot of tonal work that I found somewhat missing here.

The Sex:

It's quick, brief, and pretty innocent--not quite closed door, but for all intents and purposes, closed door.

While I wouldn't say this novel thrilled me, I did find it pleasant. I would definitely recommend Olivia Waite readers try it out, especially if you're in the mood for a soft place to land.

Thanks to Netgalley and WebMotion for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.