This book was slow, and somber. It took me a web to read because of it's slow pace and unexciting characters. ( )

A queer retelling of Cinderella in which the fairy godmother is sort of a combo of Ash's dead witch mother and a fae dude with the hots for her. There is a prince and a ball and hidden identities, but there's also a lady royal hunter, and Ash has some choices to make.
Fabulous retelling - I loved the twists put into the original tale, and except for the ending feeling a bit rushed and a little too pat, I really enjoyed it. ( )

Honestly, I had higher hopes for this. But really the only thing this book has going for it is that it's got a queer protagonist and love story. I found it highly disappointing simply because it was shallow, lacking any real depth or nuance to both the story and the characters.

A disappointing read that only gets a higher mark because YA with a queer main character is rare 4/10 ( )

I love a good fairy tale re-imagining.

I read this book while in the UK, attending and speaking at a conference in Liverpool. This book took me a total of maybe two days to read, and I loved every single second of it.

I remember beginning it and thinking to myself that I wouldn’t like it as much as I thought I would, but then as the pages kept turning and the story kept progressing, I just found myself finding every excuse to read.

The story is a new take on the classic story of Cinderella. Ash, a young girl whose mother was a grassroots witch and whose father is a man who never believed much in that stuff, has been orphaned after the unfortunate death of both her birth parents. Her cruel stepmother demotes her to slave and chambermaid, and locks away anything that belongs to Ash from her parents. In a fit of desperation, Ash starts to spend whole evenings lying near her dead mother’s grave, spurred on by the memory of the folktale in their part of the world that says that if no vigil is kept on the night that somebody is buried, their soul will be taken away. She is constantly hoping to find the Fae that live in the forests, and one day is granted her wish. A Fae man, Sidhaen, arrives and grants her her wishes, but makes a deal with her that eventually, she must go with him to the fairy world, never to return to her own. This all sounds well and good, as she is completely obsessed and in love with the fairy prince, but it is when she falls in love with the King’s Huntress that this decision becomes all the more difficult.

This story is so well told and beautifully written, and though you know Ash will eventually find her happiness, it is still so suspenseful in its own way.

What I especially liked about it is that Ash is never explicitly said to have any attraction towards either gender, effectively making her a bisexual character. It is also not really something that is ever shown to be fully frowned upon in their society for Ash to be falling in love with a woman, although all the women around her seem to be flocking towards men. Perhaps we just never get to see that side of this world; perhaps it’s just a non-issue altogether. It is nice, though, to read a story where a gay character doesn’t dwell on the backlash of their attraction for pages on end.

Seriously though, read this book if you like re-imagined fairytales. Every single part of it was just so well-written and plotted out, and I loved the build up in the story from Ash’s childhood to her adolescence, and her steady falling in love with (and eventual pulling away from) the fairy world in the wake of her mother’s death.

All in all, my final rating is 5/5. Please read this book and appreciate how amazing it is! ( )

Everyone is familiar with the sadness of the Cinderella story: Cinderella's father is dead, or isn't around to defend/protect her from her wicked stepmother and stepsisters; said steps treat her cruelly and force her to be a servant; they don't let her go to the ball. But Ash is soaked with grief from beginning (we open on Ash's mother's funeral) to almost the end. Grief and a desire to escape is the constant throughout the story. An explanation is given for the stepmother forcing Ash to be a servant: Ash's father saddled the family with his debt when he died. The numbness from grief and depression explains why she stays and doesn't fight back. Ash does feel grief about her father's death, but it's more about losing the last bit of childhood safety and security that she had. If her grief for her father's death is a lake, her grief for her mother's death is the ocean.

The plot with the fairy Sidhean is interesting. The fairies of this book and its stories are the dangerous, alluring fairies of Irish (and other) folklore. They spirit unsuspecting or enthralled humans away, steal babies and leave changelings, time in fairyland is different than time in the human world, and they are said to be found in the deep forest. Ash returns to the forest again and again for this reason. Her life is so miserable that she'd prefer to be taken by the fairies, and wonders if they took her mother.

Ash's relationship with Kaisa, the King's huntress, grounds her and gives her hope. While Sidhean represents the deep, dangerous, and dark part of the forest, Kaisa is the normal, light-filled, nature part of the forest. Ash has been cooped up in the house and walked constantly in the dark of the forest, hoping to be taken, but Kaisa brings light into her life, offering her kindness and friendship to Ash. Kaisa teaches Ash to ride a horse. Ash goes to the royal hunt and the ball to see her. It may seem to most readers that less time and effort is spent on developing or depicting the relationship between Ash and Kaisa, that it lacks the spark that Ash and Sidhean have, but it's important that love is shown as not the flash of attraction, but as a quiet, steady thing you build together over time.

Read the full (spoilery) review, including trigger warnings, at https://fileundermichellaneous.blogspot.com/2022/06/book-review-ash-by-malinda-l... ( )