Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review via NetGalley. This is an adult fantasy retelling of Cinderella where she has grown to hate her husband. Thirteen years after they married, she is considering killing her husband. At the beginning of the book, we don't know why she feels this way, but throughout the reader gets to piece together the story through flashbacks.

The Charmed Wife is bursting with fairytales that all intertwine in refreshing and modern ways - Cinderella struggles when she realises that happily ever afters aren't as simple as they seem. This book was honestly a lot stranger than I expected and it had a lot of twists and turns. It definitely felt like Cinderella was an unreliable narrator at times, which made it very interesting to read, as the reader finds out a lot of information through her eyes. It's a dark twist on the fairytale, and I also enjoyed the takes on the characters of the fairy godmother and the witch. A lot of other fairytales also appear, such as the twelve dancing princesses and sleeping beauty.

I loved the concept of this book, but I didn't enjoy the execution as much as I thought it would - it was quite confusing for me. It all seemed like a big jumble and I wasn't sure how everything fit together - I found myself having to reread parts. There were also some asides that I didn't really care about - at first I thought the parts about Brie and Nibbles were cool spins on the fairytale, but the sections got too long for my liking and I became uninterested after the first few. I did read it quickly because it's a short book, but the plot did drag for me. Cinderella was the only character I was really interested in so I didn't become fully invested in the story.

So I was grateful to receive a copy of this book, but unfortunately, I just didn't click with this book. I have no doubt that some people would enjoy this book, but it wasn't for me. I could see where Cinderella was coming from in her feelings, but in general, I didn't care much about the characters. However, this book was short so I got through it pretty quickly! Content warnings for discussion of murder, violence, infidelity, sexism, drug use, and mentions of fatphobia.

2.5/5 stars

I was disappointed with this as I really wanted to enjoy it - a cinderella retelling where happy ever after didn't exist? Sounded great. Instead, I got a run of the mill abusive husband cheating on his wife, and the wife wanting to leave him. If it wasn't for the fact that I knew it was a retelling, I wouldn't have really gotten that at all from it.

What happens after the Happily Ever After? When the prince turns out to be a serial cheat and Cinderella suffers from PND?

Loved the concept of this book, and the way it weaved what seemed like hundreds of fairytales together. Loved the wry look at some of the classic takes on princess stories and what they teach us about love.

Wasn’t mad keen on the ending, as it felt like a bit of a cop out in that “and then I woke up and it was all a dream” way, but it was interesting, unexpected and the resolution was grittily realistic. 

In some ways it felt like two very different books stitched together, and while I would have enjoyed both independently, I wasn’t sure about the transition. I think it might have worked best if you knew the truth from the start and read both sections concurrently.

Also wasn’t thrilled about the extent to which the prince was let off the hook - had more than a whiff of the blame the woman to it. However, I really enjoyed the sisters (and in particular the older sister who was a delightful character I wish we’d seen more of).

Another downside for me is that I found it over-written in places so it was more of a trudge than a frolic.

LOVED the Brie and Nibbles interludes. Truly the real heroes of the books and some much needed comic relief.

Definitely worth reading, especially if you love fairytales, but not my favourite in the genre.

DNF at 56%

I tried but I couldn't finish it. The Prince Charming was so insufferable. And Cinderella was so whining and annoying. I tried but I couldn't like this book enough to sludge through the remaining 44%. My brain will be fried.

Giving it 3 stars at best.

THE CHARMED WIFE wasn’t what I was expecting. It starts out as a ‘what comes after’ Cinderella, then weaves in other fairy tales before playing around with time and place entirely.

At points I found that a little confusing, things are mentioned then changed later on, but it builds nicely over the course of the book, giving it a dreamlike feel as Cinderella’s story unravels for us.

I think that quality is something that will either work for you or won’t. Its hard to explain without spoilers, but THE CHARMED WIFE wasn’t what I went into it thinking it would be. The book is incredibly memorable, and I enjoyed parts of it immensely, but I also struggled with the pacing in places.

THE CHARMED WIFE is an unusual retelling, and something that feels quite grown-up. This would be one for readers looking for a unique style of fairy tale and readers looking for something that plays between realism and fantasy.

“Love makes everyone blind, as simpering court storytellers are forever fond of intoning, quite as if blindness were a happy circumstance in which we all long to share. Storytellers are dangerous fools, and my eyes are wide open now.”

Olga Grushin’s debut novel Dream Life of Sukhanov was a delightful surprise and one of my favourite books of 2006, and her next novel in 2010, the wonderful The Concert Ticket (also set in the Soviet Union) was an excellent follow-up. I see I have rated both books 4* but that was pre Goodreads and when I typically gave 1-2 books a year 5*; both would likely now be 5 stars on my Goodreads scale.  

Forty Rooms, focused on the life of a Russian émigré, wasn’t quite so successful for me, flawed but still intoxicating and a good 4 star read.  But it contained an intriguing link to this, her latest novel to be published in 2021, with early chapters that beautifully captured the wonder of childhood when everything in the world seems mysterious, and the boundary between reality and imagination is blurred.

“He belonged to my Russian childhood. The otherworldly real of fairy tales, secrets and revelations that - even at my eighteen years of age - was so quickly receding into the distance of both time and space that I could already see myself believing someday that half of it had been real, or perhaps all of it had been real.”

Strikingly Forty Room’s narrator’s dialogues with seemingly imaginary characters, and her visions of what might have been / might yet be, continued throughout her life. 

“What after all is the difference between a memory and a fantasy? Are not both a succession of imprecisely rendered images further obscured by imprecisely chosen words and animated only by the wistful effort of one's imagination.”

The Charmed Wife takes us away from a Russian-based setting and firmly into the world of fairy tales.   It is a sequel of sorts to the story of Cinderella, following in the footsteps of many authors, including (as Grushin acknowledges) “A. S. Byatt, Italo Calvino, Angela Carter (The Bloody Chamber is a masterpiece), Robert Coover, Neil Gaiman, George MacDonald, Cristina Bacchilega, Ruth Bottigheimer, Maria Tatar, Marina Warner, and Jack Zipes.”

“We live by rules in our land, and the rules are exacting and many. Trials and wishes come in threes, glossy fruit should be avoided, frogs must never be kissed unless you are ready for a commitment, and princesses, at least the war‑bling kind, should be ever so mindful of their mood swings—it is sunny when we are cheerful, dreary when we are sad, and stormy when we are driven to consult heinous hags in furtive matters of maleficent magic.”

Married for 13 and a half years, the novel opens with our heroine, now Queen of the kingdom, snipping off a lock of her husband’s hair then meeting with said heinous hag,  a witch who needs this to cast a spell cursing Prince NolongersoCharming.   The Fairy Godmother tries to intervene and the discussion between Queen, witch and Godmother gives us both much of the back history of the troubled aftermath of the fairytale wedding and also the tangled (yes there is a nod to Rapunzel and indeed many other fairy tales) history of all three.

There is also a side-story of the mice (and ex-horses), or rather of many generations of said mice, told by an omnipotent narrator, once to which Cinderella (actually, we find, called Jane) is rather oblivious:

“She naturally attributed much more significance to her own life than to the lives of simple mice, and would have been genuinely astonished had anyone told her that her one-note, romance-obsessed, cliché-ridden story might not be immensely more important or endlessly more fascinating than the multigenerational, multidimensional, magical, militant, philosophical, and culturally diverse saga of the dynasty of Nibbles and Brie.”

Around two-thirds of the way through the novel the setting shifts from the world of fairy tales to that of modern-day New York, giving an alternative, more real-world, take on the troubled marriage although even there our heroine (who has her account evolves becomes increasingly less heroic), views her life, rather like in Forty Rooms,  through the prism of fairy tales, and is also uncertain what is a real memory and what a story:

“Perhaps all these other truths I now remember are only stories I once told myself to keep sane, to mask the crude ugliness of things ending, to transform the chaos of pain into some semblance of order, of higher sense. 

And maybe that is what all fairy tales are, at their heart: generations of unhappy women through‑ out history who lost their mothers to disease, fathers to violence, daughters to labor, sons to hunger, who were beaten, abandoned, exploited, orphaned, collectively trying to dream themselves into a life that made sense, spinning tales of man‑eating ogres, crystal shoes, poisonous apples, and true love—thinly veiled metaphors of everything gone wrong and everything hoped for on lonely winter nights.”

Overall, the novel is an impressive achievement in many respects, and fun to read, although didn’t entirely cohere for me.  At times the fairy tale part (with people literally living in shoes and gingerbread houses) seemed to make this more of a children’s story (rather belying the spikier messages about relationships), the mice story didn’t seem to add much (other than enabling the author/narrator to make the point in the quote above) and the shift from fairy-tale to New York (why does that make me think of Kirsty McColl?!) wasn’t entirely successful given Jane didn’t really shift her mental world.

I look forward to Grushin’s further novels, but compared to her earlier work, this was a relative disappointment for me.  3 stars.

The premise of THE CHARMED WIFE is what initially hooked me - Cinderella deciding to kill her husband. I wanted to know what had gone wrong and what would happen after her decision.

The books takes this premise and need to know, and uses it to slowly pull you in by spooling out the initial questions in the first half, alternating between "Cinderella" meeting the witch at midnight and making the choice to kill her husband with the recounting of their married life, as it starts to lose its shine and she struggles with her mental health.

Once you're hooked by this tale, and desperate to see her free and happy, the book then takes an unexpected turn into modern day. The setting change was an interesting device that creeps up and then becomes obviously New York. It took me a while to get used to it, and I wasn't sure what to make of it until the end, when it's purpose in the story was revealed. It's a nice twice and thinking point to end the story on, using the duality of the setting to suggest a duality of story.

There are dark, subverted fairy tales running left and right through this book, interweaving into a tangled knot. I loved the layers that built up as the new stories were told, linking and expanding on stories - all with a deeply feminist slant that looked at the rotten reality under the peach pastel stories. You could probably play bingo with all the fairy tales involved.

My overall impression of the book was not one of hope. Even at the end, I felt weighed down and dispirited despite the attempt at a happier note to end on. It's wonderfully written then, a book to sit down and dissect the setting and imagery of as it's so cleverly done to make that setting transition seamless as the world slowly changes around Cinderella.

The copy and concept for this book really drew me in and I was so intrigued. I was hoping it was going to be this really exciting, magical, twist on a fairytale but it just didn't quite hit the mark for me. 

I found the characterisation a little off-putting and the motivations and actions weren't quite believable enough for me. It made it hard to connect to the story and I found myself putting the book down and not caring if I returned. 

The pace did pick up in the second half, however, by this point I had very little emotional connection to the story. It just wasn't quite the book I thought it was going to be - I suppose I was hoping the for the magical whoosh that something like Caraval had to offer. Sadly it just wasn't quite for me, I can certainly see how this would appeal to perhaps more literary readers.

This is a clever (and perhaps a little cynical) story about what happens after the 'happily ever after'.  A very entertaining read for fairy tale fans but definitely not one for the kiddies ;)

Thirteen and a half years after her happily ever after to Prince Roland, Cinderella is drowning in palace chintz, boredom, depression and can barely remember her two children. Roland is no longer the man she thought she'd married. Cinderella sneaks out of the palace with the final few ingredients requested by a witch who will brew her a potion. But Cinderella is no longer interested in regaining the love that was lost, as it was perhaps never there in the first place ...

This book is heady and trippy in a way that can make it hard to read - it's got that strange Gormenghast/Lewis Carroll quality that means that you can't quite tell where or when in time it is - elements of the now seep in with the core fairy tale that you'd expect and it makes everything confusing and the lines of the story blur together.

I think that can be quite off-putting for some people. For me, it works, but if it was a longer novel I definitely would have run out of patience. Instead, the whole story feels like a splintered mirror, with fragments scattered everywhere, and the protagonist is drifting along, trying to repair it into the resemblance of what things once were, and what she once was.

There are so many elements of the kind of literature that I like that this novel draws on too, and I loved spotting them. First off, this isn't just Cinderella's story. As she removes herself from the Prince and the palace, we see fragments of others' fairy tales that cross over with her own - some are those Hans Christian Anderson, Charles Perrault or Brothers Grimm tales that we know well, and just as gruesome. Others are the same, but with an Angela Carter-style modern twist, from the Twelve Dancing Princesses, to Bluebeard.

All of these tales of women - written and designed to punish, to put in place - have been twisted slightly to show them in more modern situations, or with more brutal outcomes. Each woman has her own fairy tale, and each woman has her own real-life pain. It's that strange way of talking about nonsensical situations as though they are commonplace that I find really compelling. But all of this misery was broken up by the comic rise and fall of a fantastic mouse empire.

We're not here to like Cinderella, but we are here to understand her pain, her depression, her anxiety, her fears as her own mind and own tale become unravelled in a book that reads like a fairy tale Bell Jar. I loved the nearly seamless integration of Shrek-style fairy potions to more real-life ones.

Separation and divorce is never a fairy tale, as this story aptly shows.

4.5 stars from me - and a lot more to think about an unpick in this dark and clever story.

Thank you to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for sending me this ARC in exchange for an honest review

Upon first seeing the synopsis for this book, I was super intrigued. I'm a big fan of a fairytale retelling, and had never read a Cinderella one before. Then I see that it's an adult, dark retelling following Cinderella as she decides she wants to kill her husband, and I was IN. I love dark storylines, and this sounded so promising.

I feel so let down after reading it. The writing is something that I really did not enjoy, and it was very all-over-the-place, disjointed, and waffled on a lot. After reading the end and encountering the twist (I guess??? It was hinted at and was fairly obvious) I can understand what the author was trying to do with this style of writing, in terms of an unreliable narrator etc. But I just don't think it was done well. It was incredibly confusing to read, and the constant shifts in first-person to third-person perspective I found jarring. The storytelling itself was kind of boring, because it was basically "this happened, this happened then this happened" and there wasn't really any dialogue or anything, and it was boring to get through for the most part. As I said, it all felt a bit disjointed throughout, and I think a big part of this is down to the constant tangents and random mini plots that had no significance at all and I found myself skimming through. For example, there's a whole mouse subplot that is brought up a lot in Part 1, and while I found it cute and quirky at first, it quickly developed into pages of random plot that I'm still confused as to why it was included.

The actual Cinderella storyline was again what drew me into this book, and I was disappointed in the route it took. The story essentially boils down to the age-old "woman scorned by her adulterous husband" tale, and her descent into prescription drug use and mental instability felt like such an outdated trope that I just do not like one bit. The characters in the story were all so flat and one-dimensional, in particular her husband. And again, I get it, I get what it was trying to do because of the narration POV and not seeing all sides of the story etc etc, but having the antagonist be "oh he cheats all the time and he's BAD" is again outdated and I didn't have a good time.

I really don't like leaving bad reviews, but the synopsis of this book had my hopes so high, and I am just kind of disappointed. I think I'm just not the audience for this book, and was misled by its description.

This is a story that takes place 13 years after Cinderella and Prince Charming have said "I do". Cinderella is not living a happy ever after and life is mundane with her children her only joy. 

While I enjoyed the writing I found myself skipping over the sections that skipped to the point of view of the mice. They just weren't for me. The story was slow to get going but there were some excellent parts and at times it was dark and exciting and a very clever retelling of a much loved fairy tale with hints of humour layered throughout. The writing is excellent and anyone that enjoys fairytale retellings will certainly love this dark and twisting tale.

'And perhaps the stories I hear are not precisely the stories they tell......"

What a beautiful thrashing Grushin gives the Cinderella story.  Kudos.

What happens after the 'happily ever after' something happens for sure unless we want to become bored and find mischief elsewhere.
 
Grushin bases this story on Cinderella's fairytale but then makes it a point to visit as many European fairytales as possible and paints them with her revisionist take.    Considering that a lot of these tales push forward the idea that we poor females need rescuing and then once we are saved by the heroic deeds of the manly man (sometimes all it takes is a kiss) then we live happily ever after.  Well ha bloody ha.  So Grushin's revision is super as she examines this in depth and we have an examination of 'love' and the 'happily ever after' and what such 'dreams', 'goals' mean.  How they take away our agency to carve a way forward based on us and who we are and what we really want.  Instead they sell the idea of what they think is happy and if we follow that then we are followers rather than leaders of our destinies.  I know which road I prefer rather than the straight jacket fairytales and gender specific roles put us in. And when I say 'us' here, it means both women and men because being a waiting heroine or a manly man is a straight jacket for both.

An ARC gently given by author/publisher via Netgalley.

The Charmed Wife pricks a bewitching pin into the glossy, rose-tinted bubble of happily-ever-after, to reveal a hugely enjoyable reality-ever-after.  Whilst the story does initially follow a familiar fairytale path, it quickly takes a turn for something infinitely more acerbic, forthright, and with plenty of cues to a thoroughly modern makeover.

What an enchanting, unique book!  This modern reimagining of the Cinderella story is striking, very well written, and peppered with sassy dashes of wry humour. My last encounter with anything fairytale-y was several years ago when I tucked in to Kate Forsyth’s The Wild Girl and Bitter Greens with absolute relish. Like these two fabulous books, The Charmed Wife falls squarely into the Grimms style of storytelling … not even a hint of Disney saccharine here.

Without going into too much detail, the book follows the untold story of the breakdown of Cinderella and Prince Charming’s marriage.  It’s bitter, messy, and brutal, with long-term friends taking sides, a lot of soul-searching, and a spiteful custody battle for the two children.  

We follow Cinderella’s steps as she seeks to carve out a new life for herself, establishing a hugely successful cleaning company (what else?) for the affluent, bouffanted wives of Connecticut and Manhattan. But this success takes time, and hiccups its way through a few high profile false starts, some of which look certain to jeopardise her custody claims … I mean, how often do you see a painfully hungover Cinders staggering back from the bus stop in the early hours of the morning clutching a bucket and a badly burnt hydrangea?  

Apart from finally discovering her true self, the breakdown of the marriage brings Cinderella back together with her two older sisters.  Admittedly they’re not storybook-pretty like our leading lady, but they’re not the ugly old boots Disney would have us believe.  Melissa married Tom and together they’ve raised a brood of rosy-cheeked children on a modest income, whilst Gloria has established herself as a wildly successful art consultant, with a short hair cut and a fabulously feminist outlook.

Like the entwined briar roses of my childhood fairytale books, The Charmed Wife effortlessly interlaces cell phones and f-bombs with talking mice and magic wells.  At times, it’s set in a seemingly endless, thorny woodland and at others you find yourself in the gleaming glass and chrome towers of Manhattan. There are witches, fairy godmothers, kings and queens … good time girls, counsellors and lawyers. But what I enjoyed the most, were all the cameo appearances: the gingerbread house, Sleeping Beauty (Cinders’ first client for her housecleaning enterprise); Snow White (who thinks nothing of stealing a husband); the Seven Dwarves (apparently rather adept lovers, providing a wonderfully confidence-boosting distraction for cuckolded wives). There are so many more than these three examples, but I don’t want to spoil the treat that awaits you.

At times the meandering plot did rather lose me - particularly in the middle of the book when Cinderella’s soul searching became as gloomy and entangled as the forest she was battling through, and I found myself skim-reading.  But the thoroughly engaging plot moves forwards relentlessly and, before long, I’d reach another stepping stone in the story that hooked me right back in.

The Charmed Wife is undoubtedly a gift for book groups … it offers up so many threads for discussion that you’ll need to make sure your group is well stocked with wine and nibbles. It’s a stylish work of sublime imagination, supreme storytelling, and exquisite plotting.

The Charmed Wife is a very unusual book and not what I was expecting at all.  Some elements are written in a magical fairytale style, whilst others crossed over into the modern world.  Occasionally it’s hard to decipher the dream from reality which is a little confusing, however this confusion turns to clarity once the modern world begins to emerge and the story begins to unravel.  For the most part I really enjoyed it, however there are some elements I didn’t enjoy quite so much.  I found myself skipping over the passages marked in italics narrated by the mice. I didn’t feel these references were an essential part of the story and found them a little tedious.   At first I enjoyed reading the references to other fairytales, but there were too many and annoyingly I found myself playing spot the fairytale throughout the book. 

However, the writing is strong and the fantasy sections are written well and because the storyline is so intriguing it makes for a compelling read.  The plot is very clever and beautifully constructed.  I feel I should re-read it, I missed some of the nudges towards the modern world earlier on in the book and this would have helped me understand how the book unravelled at the end.  An enjoyable read, but don’t expect an fairytale retelling of life after Cinderella marries, this one has a twist.  I definitely didn’t expect the book to pan out the way it did!

Thank you so much to the publisher for the early review proof and eARC.

Such a different take on the the Happy Ever after. This was a clever and somewhat cynical book. Cleverly interwoven fairytale staples and very modern sensibilities  create a quite singular book that will no doubt find a strong following in the girls who feel a damsel should not be in distress if in want of a Prince.

Although the book is really well written, I didn’t love the story. I found it hard to connect to and boring. I read it to the end but struggled

Thank you to Netgalley for this eARC of The Charmed Wife. This was an intriguing 'update' on Cinderella's life, post-marriage, she re-evaluates how things have gone and realises it has not been such a 'Happily Ever After' after all. The clever writing style challenges the ideals of traditional fairytales that are often based on 'love at first sight' and presents a different viewpoint that is more realistic and fitting with current times. 

I really enjoyed this and would recommend it to anyone wanting to read an alternative ending to fairytale.

Not quite a fairytale ending! The Charmed Wife tells the story of Cinderella after the Happily Ever After we all know, and delves deep into a dark experience of marriage.

Although superbly well written and detailed, I found it difficult to connect to the book. I did love the saga of Nibbles and Brie, Cinderella's mice, and would have happily read an entire story on their history! But Cinderella read as quite a dull and ineffectual character, and I found myself very frustrated with her.

I received a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

The Cinderella story from another viewpoint. Married to him for over 13 years, Cinderella has found that life with Prince Charming is not the lovely romantic dream of the fairy tale. Other fairy tales are interwoven, alongside mire modern elements as the novel proceeds. The book is original, but I am afraid the mix did not work for me.