Stalking Cinderella

I sense him watching me.

No one will save me from my fate. my step brother torments me, my step mother is cruel and hates me, and I am the only person in this god-forsaken town who won’t be able to go to the masquerade. Won’t anyone please help me? Literally anyone, I am not picky.

He will, but do I want him to? He talks like the sensuous dark devil, but if he will give me one wish I will give him anything. I just want a dress and to go to the masquerade ball to forget who I am. Only, I wasn’t prepared for what that might entail.

WOW. simply wow. I never knew fairy tales could be so steamy and riveting, but here we are with an amazing, dark, steamy retelling of Cinderella and I am completely converted.

This was such a good Cinderella retelling for so many reasons. Reverse Harem angle, step-sibling gender role reversal, stepmother being ‘evil’ in a way that exemplifies ‘cruel’ in its innermost meaning, the ‘fairy god mother’ twist that was so delightfully perfect and dark, the prince overall – it was simply chef’s kiss.

I will say that if you are looking for more plot with sprinkling of spice, this is not the novel – it is more spice than plot, although I felt it worked perfectly with the story as-is.

Elise’s inner trauma, self hatred and self confidence issues, and her journey to discover that it is OK to embrace your darker, spicier desires was so good and honestly relatable. You are not always going to have happiness thrust upon you (no pun intended), you sometimes have to work hard and endure and take it for yourself. You have to stop denying your deepest spicy desires and embrace them – it will only hold you back from true happiness/pleasure if you try to pretend you are someone other than who you are.

I wish we had gotten to see Elise’s inner growth a bit more, even right at the end she still resigned her self to her fate before things went askew, and I would have liked her to put up more of a fight for herself as we progressed through the novel. However, most of the story was told by Rowan and the Prince so I do see why we didn’t get that as much.

Overall Stalking Cinderella by Leann Belle was a great book! I would 100% recommend it to those dark, spicy, erotica-fantasy-romance lovers out there. I will definitely be reading the rest of the Vicious Wonders series!

*This book was gifted to me in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.*