Ash by Malinda Lo

[description from Amazon]

Cinderella retold

In the wake of her father's death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.

The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King's Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash's capacity for love-and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.

Entrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.

Review:

Having read and heard at least 30 other retellings of Cinderella, I was excited to finally read a unique version of the tale. Not that the ones everyone wrote in 5th grade weren't original (Cinderella as an apple is quite a...different take on the story, I must admit), but I also figured that Ash would be written a whole lot better than anything my class full of 10 year olds wrote. Luckily, I was right! The writing was just beautiful- descriptive, magical, and full of wonderful imagery.

The plot is not really focused on the relationship between Ash and Kaisa as one might expect, but the romace that is present is sweet. They fall in love slowly and their relationship, while passionate, is quiet. They are shy around each other, but somehow that makes their relationship all the more adorable. The other big part of the plot- the fairy Sidhean and his realm- I loved. It added a whole new twist to the book that made the story even more magical than it was.

Because this a retelling, many of the characters' personalities are familiar and expected- the stepmother and stepsisters are plain mean like they are in the original Cinderella, so they are flat characters. Ash, on the other hand, has such conflicted and deep feelings about her parents, Kaisa, and Sidhean, that she is a much more developed character. It's also easy to relate to her feelings about her dead mother, which makes her an even more likeable character.

Ash is a wonderfully written, enchanting book, with twists that set it apart from the original Cinderella.

8.5/10

Ash will be released September 1- this Tuesday!

Links: Malinda's website, blog/twitter

Little, Brown/Hardcover/$16.99/Amazon/B&N/Borders/IndieBound