ME, CINDERELLA? by Aubrey Rose

Me, Cinderella? by Aubrey Rose
My rating: 2 of 5 stars



ARC provided by author for a honest review.

I wanted to like this book much more than I did. I liked the idea behind it. There were some glaring issues I had with the structure, which could have just been a formatting issue, but the way around it was to make clear breaks. What I mean by this, is that there would be time when one moment would end and then the author would jump to a future event in the next paragraph. There was no spacing at times to delineate that this wasn't something that was happening just after the previous paragraph accept that you knew the character couldn't have been doing what they were doing unless it was some time in the future. Or the author would be writing from one persons perspective then the other without some spacing or chapter change, a symbol, line or something to show a change in the storytelling. That was an issue for me.

Brynn has has some hard knocks in her life. I think I identified with her relationship with her father, as it's similar to mine. Although she gets called much more often than I do. She's been raised by her grandmother after something horrible happened to her mother and she was basically expelled from her father's home.

Now in this are some issues for me as well. What happened to her mother? She doesn't know and we never really know either. It's explained that something horrible happened, her father went to take care of things and then came back and never spoke of it again, accept in these strange cryptic statements that he makes to her, which she feels he should apologize for and never does. I'm never clear on what any of that means.

I'm also unclear as to the timeline of her father's marriage to his current wife. It doesn't seem that her step-siblings are much older than she is. Are they half-siblings, since her father seems to dote on them?

Brynn's Grandmother has raised her to be nice, and to basically pay it forward. When she offers Dr. Eliot Herceg a cup of coffee, events culminate in her telling him a fake name. There's never any indication of where this name came from. Was it her Grandmother's name, did she just pull it out of thin air? There really isn't a real reason that she gave for using the fake name other than for the author to have him not be able to find her when he needs to inform her of something.

The author did do a good job of the emotional turmoil that Eliot and Brynn go through because of their respective pasts. Eliot has held onto ten years of guilt for something that wasn't his fault. And Brynn has seen herself as the chubby unwanted girl who has had many instances where other people's treatment of her has reinforced the idea that she's unloveable. I also felt Brynn's despair over her belief that Eliot didn't feel the same way she felt for him and trying let her friend Mark down, knowing how it feels when someone doesn't want the same thing from a relationship that you do. Brynn does some specific things with food that happens when a child grows up starving. But, the author misses the chance to have her connect with Eliot and explain this. He notices her idiosyncrasy with food, but it never goes anywhere.

Eliot's sister-in-law, Marta, was sweet to Brynn and I liked how sisterly and loving she was to Eliot. As his bother's wife, she was great in trying to get him to move on with his life. Otto was a great bother as well, giving Eliot good advice, even when he didn't ask for it.

I felt for Eliot when he basically has a post traumatic event at the dinner with Brynn. Once it's all explained, you kind of get it. But the event used felt like it was too easy. Basically mimicking an actual event that has happened and placing it in this story.

This was a sweet enough story, but it felt like a lot of pieces placed in for effect, but when no real resolutions to some of the things that happened.

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