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Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

151 reviews

gcoulsxn's review

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adventurous dark hopeful inspiring mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0


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joliebean's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? N/A
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5


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itsrenee's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

God I loved this book. Definitely going to one of my all time favourites. Sophia’s fight to the very end to
ending Manfred’s reign
meant so much to me and
stopping the tyranny over the people allowing for women to be free and have actual choices
was so important to me and I’m so proud of her

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sn8man's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful inspiring mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5


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hello_ned's review against another edition

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adventurous funny fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Perhaps if I was younger, I'd have enjoyed this book more. Quite a shallow book about serious topics that just didn't hit hard for me.

The dislikes
  • The pacing was quite strange, although I admit that near the end, I just wanted to get this book over with
  • Shallow, one-dimensional characters. All you know about Sophia is she's lesbian and wants to overthrow the patriarchy. She's very outspoken, stubborn, and constantly speaks out- which is strange considering how many times you were told how dangerous it is to speak against the king and the system. She doesn't grow as a character at all. What she starts out with is what we finish with.
  • The confrontation scenes with her parents and Erin are disappointing, yet again reflections of their shallow characters.
  • I found the ending quite ironic,
    as their whole idea is to otherthrow the dictatorship, but then they placed themselves as the rulers, chose their own advisors "for the good of the people" and didn't change their laws despite the outcry from some people stuck in their ways. You can say it's good they made all those changes to strive for equality, but it was described to quickly and shallowly that it made me disappointed. No matyer how good their intentions were, in the end, they became dictators. Whicb really spoils the meaning of the story.
  • As a lesbian, i really did not enjoy this portrayal of romance. It was shallow, and immediately focused on physical attraction. There was a scene where they stripped naked, and although it was "necessary for the plot," it was tinged with weird vibes. 
  • The main plot twist was.. meh. Not particularly engaging. There was a "callback" from the middle ish of the story that I didnt remember. I looked back and it was mentioned in like one line.. felt a bit shoehorned it.
  • Very sad to see the only gay male character be absolutely infinitesimally unimportant to the story. He was present for like 10 pages total and might as well have not been in there, which is a shame.

The loves
  • Despite clearly aimed for pre-teen girls, there was a lot of violence. The mentions of domestic violence was handled well in a serious tone. The other violence in fighting/battle scenes where very well-written and downright shocking. There was a scene where
    they bring out this minor character,  that I for some reason really liked, and straight up chopped her head off.
    it was important to the story, and my jaw had dropped. I had to take a second to recuperate 
  • It had some humour I really enjoyed, some quite crude. There was a scene where they threatened this man with a dagger and he "pisses his pants." It genuinely made me laugh out loud.

Not much to this story, not spectacular. If this was a Wattpad book or a Netflix show it would have rated higher. This was really popular on booktok, which usually indicates general disappointment- especially with new-age writing.


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fierygecko's review against another edition

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dark hopeful sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Cinderella is Dead surprised me with it’s world building; I was taken by the concept that Bayron presents of a world continuing on after a fairy tale takes place in it and the impact that has on society. While I really enjoyed this, I also struggled with how absolutely miserable the world is purely because I wasn’t expecting it. The story speaks very loudly about sexism and homophobia, which I think is a good thing. However, I also felt tired at the idea of another novel where being queer was against the norm and looked down upon. Additionally, some of the plot twists in the novel didn’t feel believable to me, which made the ending of the book feel kind of unsatisfying. I think if I had’ve read this when I was of age to be the target audience for this novel, I would have loved it. It asks the hard questions about what princess stories teach us about self-worth, and has an ethnically diverse cast to top it off.

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sammy_nor's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional inspiring fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.25

the book was good, but it felt like it was missing something to make it special.

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bookedbymadeline's review against another edition

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adventurous dark fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Hooked from the beginning! I devoured this book, so engaging and fast paced. A unique retelling that lived up to the hype! The plot twist caught me completely by surprise, it was so well done.

The only “negatives” that I didn’t completely love (but didn’t keep this from being a 5 star) was the romance and a couple of predictable plot points. The romance was just okay for me, it felt a bit insta lovey. As for the plot points/reveals, I predicted two of them almost immediately 😂🥲

Overall it was a quick, entertaining read! Highly recommend for those that also enjoy retellings 

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marnirie's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

I really wanted to like this book. 

It tries to be everything at once and fails to do so. On one hand there’s simply too much and a lot of stuff is mentioned as important only to never be mentioned again, while on the other hand there’s actually very little that happens and all the characters seem to say every single thought out loud without any filters. Everything else is explained in every single detail and I found I was able to predict the story from the get go and had to wait over 200 pages before mc did…

I really don’t know why I finished it. I think I hoped that it would become more but it never did. 

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amazelan's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

c'est la meilleure réécriture de conte de fées que j'ai pu lire !

prendre le conte de Cendrillon, qui est honnêtement l'un des pires en terme de leçon pour une femme "elle doit être belle et son rêve le + grand, son + grand épanouissement est de se marier à un homme" et en faire une version féministe et lesbienne VRAIMENT QUELLE IDÉE INCROYABLE !

Sophia est un personnage principal vraiment chouette, qui évolue si vite dans le bon sens mais sans que ça devienne irréaliste, elle accroît sa haine de Manford et ses hommes mais ne devient pas experte du maniement des armes en 2 semaines par exemple
puisqu'elle n'arrive à le tuer que parce qu'il est déjà affaibli et en galérant.

puis juste slay elle est lesbienne et trop mimi dans sa manière de décrire ses sentiments aaaaaazkdnd
j'ai beaucoup aimé Amina aussi, le grey character du livre et SI BIEN ÉCRITE.
Constance en revanche aurait pu être plus développée, on ne voit d'elle que sa haine des hommes (slay) et sa grande débrouillardise, mais du coup ça n'en fait pas un personnage si intéressant que ça au final.
et Manford est vraiment un méchant en puissance, sa manière immonde de traiter les femmes - et la manière immonde de beaucoup d'hommes du roman à traiter les femmes - n'est pas atténuée ou enjolivée (side eye au dark romance dégueu) : c'est décrit comme ce que c'est, de la misogynie et des VSS.

c'était une lecture empouvoirante dans un sens, et je trouve ça nécessaire de remanier les contes de fées comme ça.
cependant, j'ai trouvé les plots twists et le déroulé général de l'histoire très prévisibles, et c'est assez lent.
je déteste cette phrase mais : "c'est plusse du côté jeunesse du young-adult" (ce qui est une bonne chose!!!! le young-adult ne doit pas être de la littérature adulte déguisée pcq les personnages sont jeunes!!!! mais mes goûts perso font que je me suis un peu ennuyé.e là du coup).

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