{"id":95826,"date":"2019-05-10T17:04:15","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T06:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=95826"},"modified":"2019-05-10T17:04:17","modified_gmt":"2019-05-10T06:04:17","slug":"reviewstepsister-jennifer-donnelly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2019\/05\/10\/reviewstepsister-jennifer-donnelly\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jennifer<\/a>

Jennifer Donnelly<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019m one of those people who loves a good fairytale retelling – particularly one that plays a little on the dark side. If you\u2019re anything like me, then you need to pick up a copy of Stepsister<\/a><\/em> by Jennifer Donnelly.<\/p>\n\n\n

This is Cinderella with a twist\u2026 because it\u2019s not even about everyone\u2019s favourite rags-to-riches princess. It\u2019s about one of the ugly stepsisters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I loved most about this book is how Donnelly approaches the idea that good people do bad things. Isabelle is one of Cinderella\u2019s two stepsisters. The story begins with a horrific scene of Isabelle being pressured by her mother into cutting off her own toes in order to fit her foot into the glass slipper. This isn\u2019t the first mistake Isabelle has made due to peer pressure, fear, embarrassment, and self-loathing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isabelle is a strikingly real person. She is a girl who sometimes buries her true self due to external pressures – her mother, society, sexism. There are reasons that Isabelle (and her other sister Tavi) mistreated Ella and none of those reasons are pretty. This is a story about girls who aren\u2019t just petty for the sake of being petty. They are girls who let their fear and self-loathing compromise who they want to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Isabelle and Tavi are loud and proud of who they really are. Isabelle is the leader. Tavi is the brains. Neither of them want the traditional life a woman is meant to want. But, at the same time, both girls are just as malleable as the rest of us. They both have their demons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the outside Isabelle appears to be strong, fearless and brave – and to some degree she absolutely is. She often outshines the boys in areas only men are meant to be good at (note the sarcasm), and she is proud of those achievements. But when it comes right down to it, Isabelle is living in a world where girls aren\u2019t meant to fence better than boys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isabelle, Tavi, and their mother are also now ostracised from the community, as their mistreatment of poor Cinderella (now the Queen of France) has become common knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Left behind in the mess that has become their lives, Isabelle wants more than anything to be pretty, so she makes a deal with a powerful fairy. If Isabelle can find the missing pieces of her heart, the fairy will make her beautiful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if all of that awesomeness isn\u2019t enough to get you hooked\u2026 there\u2019s a whole other side to this story that I haven\u2019t even touched on yet!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stepsister<\/em> starts with this great opening prologue of three other sisters – a maiden, a mother, and a crone. They draw maps. Maps of people\u2019s lives. These maps cannot be changed. Except there is one man – Chance – who gets his thrills from stealing maps from the sisters and helping the subject of said map change their life!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isabelle\u2019s map is one such map. Chance is determined to help Isabelle change her fate. But the crone – known as Fate – has other ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love Chance and Fate! They are two sides of the same coin and there seems to be a level of respect running underneath their discord. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stepsister<\/em> is dark, honest, confronting, and enchanting. For anyone who has ever wanted something more from life, or from themselves, this story will ring true for you, as it did with me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beauty isn’t always pretty… read Bron’s review of Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly, a dark and enchanting retelling of Cinderella.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":95831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[2777,4484,9870,6644],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/StepsisterReview-social.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95826"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95826"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95864,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95826\/revisions\/95864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}