Original Title: Met by Midnight
Series: Star-Crossed Gifts
Author: Janeen Ippolito
Published: September 22nd, 2020
Publisher: Uncommon Universes Press
*THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS AND ONE F BOMB*
THIS HAS TO BE ONE OF THE WORST THINGS I'VE EVER READ.
Whatever this is... it's not a Cinderella retelling. Run from here as fast as you can.
I'll start by saying that, under the claim that a book is a Cinderella retelling, writers and publishers deliver literally anything. The same thing happens with the first book in the Throne of Glass series, by Sarah J. Maas. It's marketed as a Cinderella retelling, but when you read it, you can't recognize any elements from the original story. Both that one, and Met by Midnight, may have some aspects in common with the original fairytale, but that doesn't make them Cinderella retellings per se. As I read this one, I kept thinking that it did not remind me of Cinderella at all, and I kept wondering, why is this even a retelling? Just because it features royalty, a ball and a heroine in servitude?
I'm seriously angry. If you are going to write a book like this, it works just the same without saying it is a Cinderella retelling. Because if you say it is, and then turn it into some sort of unfleshed out fairytale dystopia wich such a far-fetched concept that feels nothing but forced, and it's basically cannibalism... leave poor Cinderella out of it. She deserves better.
My point is, I understand the original fairytales are, indeed very flat and simple, but retellings like this one are golden opportunities for writers to fill the blanks and make them richer, deeper, and more complex. To tell us that the story was not as simple as we always thought it was. But this book felt more as a lack of respect to the original story. It doesn't feature the stepmother or the stepsisters, and least of all, the glass slipper.
Plus, the whole meeting each other in their dreams thing sounds more like Once Upon a Dream, from Sleeping Beauty, rather than Cinderella.
Janeen Ippolito seriously needs a few lessons on narration and storytelling, because her entire book feels like a rough draft, not a polished novel ready for publication. The characters are flat and depthless. The setting is unfleshed out. Things happens so fast... It's like she poured all her ideas on the paper as she got them, but didn't work on making them deeper and more complex. I felt nothing reading this novel, except anger.
Don't get me wrong, though. The whole idea of Menders isn't bad, and it could have been better. Renna and her father are prisoners in a Sanctuary where Menders are used as tools by the government, forcing them to heal, and also to marry other Menders, so they can have children that will also be Menders. This is supposed to be the dystopian aspect of it, a powerful class of people with healing powers used by the government to stay young and healthy, basically through a practice that sounds a lot like cannibalism. Apparently this Sanctuary place is ruled by Attendants and Guardians, but we never get an explanation of what's the difference between the two, which is their role there, nor we get a scene in which to see the real consequences of defying them.
Renna, the heroine, could have been a good character, but she falls flat, and she's... well, she's an idiot. I can understand how she feels about freedom, the need to leave her prison and decide her own fate. But it's so poorly written that it's not even engaging. I don't care if by the end she gets to be free or not, or if she lives or dies. She's forced to Mend, taking on her own body the ailments of others, and then suffering the consequences. During one of these sessions, she meets Lady Anlyn, who is the Fairy Godmother of the story, the one that finds out the terrible life Menders live and helps her in her quest to get the royal seal, rescue her father from the Sanctuary and take him to freedom before he dies. She's the one that provides the dress and the possibility to go to the ball. And in this ball, there's a prince, of course. Prince Jaricob, the second son of the King and Queen, apparently cursed and beyond all healing, because Menders have no effect on him.
Known as Jaric, this prince is... well, he's also an idiot. His family considers him disposable. He's in love with the girl he sees in his dreams, he's convinced she's real, and even though his parents want to marry him off and send him away to the northeastern province (conveniently, Renna's homeland), he refuses, because:
"His heart belonged to another, even though she may not exist."
He loves a woman he never met. And this, for me, it's an insta-no. I'm not even sorry. I can't root for a love story in which the people involved haven't even met. But it doesn't get any better when they finally do. Jaric follows Renna when she leaves the ballroom, and they meet in his study.
"She could no more envision him harming her than she could imagine her own parents raising a blade to her throat.
No, this royal, this man, would only assist her.
With every aspect of her being."
Last time I checked, Renna's power was healing, not mind reading. And then:
"And that confidence raised a fresh shudder along her skin. Not of fear, but another feeling that Renna had only learned about from the book she had read on spousal pairing. A sense of deep connection, of desire fueling every part of her with heat and need."
You've got to be KIDDING ME.
And then they kiss, and the world stops, and then Jaric is called to the ballroom to announce his engagement; he checks the time and it's 11:45 PM, when it was only 10 when he entered the room. All I could think was "how long have you been kissing?"
And if this wasn't enough, Renna thinks this:
"She barely knew him, and yet all she wanted to do was lose herself in Jaric's arms at last and forever."
At last from what, if you never saw him before?? *massive eye-roll*
So cringy.
"However she also barely knew Anlyn, and Renna had trusted her a great deal. So perhaps that reasoning was not so useful?"
It's cute that she's using the word reasoning for it. Because that's not reasoning, it's just stupidity. Renna is indeed intolerably stupid. On the one hand she has been warned her whole life that she can't trust anyone, and then this happens.
"Her hands itched to trail up his arms, to see if his biceps truly were that large, his jaw that strong."
I thought this was a life or death situation. Would you focus, please? You exhaust me. And you are making me angrier than I already am.
Because before this scene, there was the Royal Fellowship Ball. Honestly, there's nothing I love more than a fairytale ball, to the obsession point. I've rewatched ball scenes from fantasy and period movies and tv shows I adore, more than a thousand times, and they are one of the things I love the most about them. So, naturally, I was looking forward to Cinderella's iconic ball scene. But as soon as Renna enters the ball and meets Jaric, she exits the room. And it made me furious! Because if there's anything you need to get right in a story based on Cinderella, is the ball scene.
But here, I didn't see anything, or met anyone new. And if in a supposed Cinderella retelling you cheat me out of the most important scene in the entire story, I will hate you with a burning passion. Janeen Ippolito's writing, as I said, requires polishing, and lots of it, and this was especially noticeable here, because I can't forgive that I was cheated out of this. Angry beyond reason, all I could think was "this is a royal ball, f***ng DESCRIBE IT!!". Make the world immersive, tell me about the dresses, the ballroom, the dancing, the music... ANYTHING. But everything is rushed, flat and unfleshed, and there's not even a dance scene, an intimate moment of the prince taking the mystery girl's hand for the dance that will decide her fate. Oh, and just because a book is a Cinderella retelling doesn't mean that her ballgown has to be blue. Just because Disney made it blue doesn't mean you have to do the same. Especially if you are striving to give your own spin to the original story.
The more I read, the more I hated this book. Everything about it is so wrong. The dialogue sucks. The characters are one dimensional, and that's for the hero and heroine alone, because the rest of the characters... Keddyr, Lady Anlyn, Princess Usilea... they are basically background noise. The supposed betrayal by the end -that it is, but then it's not-, the horror elements around the crimes committed by the King and Queen... SO FAR FETCHED. They didn't feel organic, or like they fit with the rest of the story. And much less a Cinderella retelling.
As for the plot twist, with Jaric being a Mender... It was a no, for me. It didn't feel natural. Of course, since he doesn't have Renna's training to heal people, he's not ready for the consequences of Receiving, and falls unconscious. And I could not understand why he woke up in Lady Anlyn's state, to the quiet and peaceful scenes that follow, when as far as we know all the soldiers in the kingdom are looking for him. Plus, his dog, Opal, is there, and the last thing we know is that he left her in the palace after escaping the ball. How is she there? Who brought her here? Keddyr? Lady Anlyn? Who?
Calling this terrible book a Cinderella retelling is an insult to the original fairytale. There is not one single thing I liked about it. And I can't forgive the fact that I did not get to go to the royal ball. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, and I can't understand the glowing five star reviews it got. For me, it's a no.
***
Thank you for reading. Hope my next read isn't this bad.
See you soon!
