“Iris realizes she is being unkind.  Sisters- be they stepsisters, half-sisters or full sisters- sisters must do for each other.”

(Disclaimer:  This will contain spoilers!)

‘Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister’ is a retelling of Cinderella by the godfather of fairy-tale retelling himself, Gregory Maguire.  This is told from the perspective of one of the two stepsisters.

Iris, her mother (Margarethe) and her sister (Ruth) have to escape England in the dead of the night because the villagers wanted them dead.  They arrived in Holland during the tulip bloom, only to find themselves homeless and destitute.  A master painter takes them in and that pretty much sets off our story.

We are introduced to Caspar, the painter’s apprentice, whom every girl has a crush on.  We are also introduced to the painter’s rich patron, Mr. Van Der Meer and his ethereally beautiful daughter, Clara (/coughcinderellacough/).  

Margarethe begins to work for the Van Der Meer and when Clara’s mother died, Margarethe marries Mr. Van Der Meer.  The girls are now Clara’s stepsister.

Now, if you think that ‘Into the Woods’ killed Cinderella for you, you might want to put this book down.  Whilst I cannot say the same about Margarethe, the stepsisters are not exagerratingly evil like in the books.  In fact, Clara (at least in the beginning) is the mollycoddled spoiled brat.  And even so, the way Maguire put it makes me feel bad for her because she does not know the world besides from what she sees from her mother’s protective back .  And when she did gather the courage to actually leave the house, things happened that probably made her wary of ever stepping a foot out again.  Basically, we have Cinderella with social anxiety.

And then, the prince aka Maria Medici’s nephew (more like a nobleman than a prince tbh).  And he is the trashiest of the trashiest of them all.  

Anyway, this story is very realistic, which is +1.  However it is also monotonous, draggy and pretty anticlimatic.  The ball was supposed to be everything TT  

Verdict: 3.7/5