'"Luck," hissed the maiden.

"Risk," the mother spat.

"Hazard," snarled the crone.

"I prefer Chance.  It has a nicer ring," the man said, with a wink.'


'Stepsister' is a retelling of Cinderella, except it's told from the perspective of one of the stepsisters.   I am a sucker for Cinderella , so when this hits the store, I immediately made a grab.

 It starts right near the end of the original fairytale, when the stepsisters cut their toes to fit into the glass slippers.  Obviously, they were exposed and the prince married Ella.  This book tells the story of what happened afterwards.

Ella becomes the Queen and left.  The two stepsisters, Isabelle and Octavia gained notoriety as the ugly stepsisters who used to torture the now Queen of France, and the townspeople made their life a living hell.   Then, the story criss-crossed to a different realm altogether.  The three Fates (the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone) make maps of human lives and Chance has a habit of stealing them, trying to make them better (until you realized that he doesn't always make them better).  Isabelle's doomed fate was sealed in her map; until Chance stole it and decided to make her salvation his next conquest.  Then, in comes the Fairy Queen herself, Tanaquill, the tiebreaker.

I cannot do justice to the book by my short review.  It's so magical.  The chapters are short but meaningful. The shallow me only wish that there were more romance in it than that.

I have read 'Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister' and it's premise is similar to this one, but if I have to pick, I'd recommend you guys 'Stepsister' any day.


Verdict: 5/5 (Hall of Famer)