Book Review: Ash

Summary: 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: To rate this book is difficult for me because I have mixed feelings about it. I feel like I should have known that I'd have this reaction, though, because this book is based off of Cinderella and I hate Cinderella almost as much as I hate Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. But despite this, I found myself enjoying the story and I thought that it was a decent read.

When I first started this book, I hated it and I almost didn't finish it. The story was so slow and nothing was happening. It was just pages upon pages of world building. Even as the book progressed, the book didn't have much in terms of the plot. There wasn't any conflict in this book so I was just reading the words without feeling the excitement of anything.

Despite the lack of the plot, I still found myself fully immersed in this book because of the world that Malinda Lo created. This is world building to its finest! I loved being in this fairy world with the fairy king, the magic, the kingdom, the traditions and everything else. The world itself made me want to continue on with the story and the other book that she wrote that's in this world.

For the characters, I have to say I feel like the characters were done decently. Ash kind of got on my nerves sometimes because she would literally just do the most randomness things just because she felt like it. I couldn't really connect to her, either. I want to say it's because the book was written in third person but I don't think that's the reason. I think it was the fact that I couldn't understand most of the reasons she did some of the things she did. For example, when she would veer off trails even though she knew it was dangerous, I never knew what was really going through her head that made her do that.

With the fairy king, he was very mysterious when we first met him and most of the other times we interacted with him. He didn't talk much but I definitely liked him as a character and I kind of wanted more of him. I don't know how I really felt about Kaisa. She kind of fell into that trap of really only being in the story to be a love interest for the main character. However, in this story, it makes sense because it's a fairy tale retelling and that's pretty much what the love interest in Disney movies are for.

Overall, I thought the book was wonderfully written. Even though this book lacked in some areas for me, I have to say that I will pick up some of her other books.

Diversity: 1
Plot: 0
Setting: 1
Characters: .5
Enjoyment: .5
Total: 3

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