The Charmed Wife

by Olga Grushin

A sophisticated literary fairy tale for the twenty-first century, in which Cinderella, thirteen years after her marriage, is on the brink of leaving her supposedly perfect life behind.

Cinderella married the man of her dreams--the perfect ending she deserved after diligently following all the fairy-tale rules. Yet now, two children and thirteen and a half years later, things have gone badly wrong and her life is far from perfect. One night, fed up, she sneaks out of the palace to get help from the Witch who, for a price, offers love potions to disgruntled housewives. But as the old hag flings the last ingredients into the cauldron, Cinderella doesn't ask for a love spell to win back her Prince Charming.

Instead, she wants him dead.

Endlessly surprising, wildly inventive, and decidedly modern, The Charmed Wife weaves together time and place, fantasy and reality, to conjure a world unlike any other. Nothing in it is quite what it seems, and the twists and turns of its magical, dark, swiftly shifting paths take us deep into the heart of what makes us unique, of romance and marriage, and of the very nature of storytelling.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Retellings, Magical Realism, Fairy Tales, Adult, Audiobook

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 12, 2021

About the author

Olga Grushin is the author of four novels - The Charmed Wife, The Dream Life of Sukhanov, The Line, and Forty Rooms - as well as short stories, literary criticism, essays, and other works. She has been awarded the 2007 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and named one of the Best Young American Novelists by Granta magazine; her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, Granta, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Partisan Review, Vogue, and other publications.

Reviews

[Olga]

THE SHORT OF IT:

This book is a riff on fairy tales, but it is not actually a genre fantasy novel, nor a romance novel. In spirit it is much closer to Alice in Wonderland than to Charles Perrault, and I venture to guess that it will not appeal to those who prefer linear narratives with feisty heroines and happy endings. Such readers will be better served by conventional fairy-tale retellings - and there are dozens of them out there. This is not one of them. On the other hand, if you like strange, genre-bending books that take you somewhere surprising and play with the very conventions of storytelling, and do not mind unreliable or unlikable protagonists, please read on.

AND THE LONG:

The Charmed Wife is my fourth novel, and I took risks with it - it is a subversive mix of fantasy and reality that falls between genres and breaks many narrative rules. When I wrote it, I thought of it as an exploration of contemporary women's issues - romantic expectations, marriage, motherhood, identity, work, age - as viewed through the lens of fairy-tale metaphors, of the stories we tell ourselves and our children. And I saw the unfolding of the narrative, in many ways, as a journey from a two-dimensional world into a three-dimensional one.

I am saying this to warn my would-be readers, then: this book is not for everyone. If you are not a voracious reader of fairy tales, you may miss some of the book's hidden subtext. If you prefer your stories fully grounded in reality, the adventures of Brie and Nibbles, my talking mice, may not be to your taste. And if you favor traditional plot-driven fantasy and like all your i's dotted at the end of the book, reading this might prove very unsettling. And, in truth, it was written with a different reader in mind.

If you are familiar with my earlier work, you will already know that I write what is termed "literary" fiction (though I do have some issues with the straitjacket nature of this term). This novel, then, is not a formulaic fairy-tale retelling. In fact, it is not a retelling so much as it is an examination (and an upending, not to say "exploding") of storytelling clichés and conventions - and it is as far from Disney pastel-colored yarns and predictable endings as it is possible to get. Expect singing teapots and bumbling magicians, yes; but expect also therapists, lawyers, and custody battles. Expect many different fairy tales intertwined and twisted amidst the play of time and space; expect dreamy landscapes where nothing is certain, where nothing is as it seems. Expect some darkness, some sadness, and many hard truths, and questions that will linger in your mind at the end of the story. Expect experimentation with language and style, too, the tone shifting from the childlike singsong of familiar storytelling to bitter modern vernacular. In other words: if you do pick it up, approach with an open mind and expect the unexpected.

Because, most likely, this book is not what you think.

I did have tremendous fun writing it, and I will be thrilled if you give it a try. And I thank all my readers over the years.

[Ceecee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the fairytale of Cinderella but not as you know it, she’s been married to Prince Roland for thirteen and a half years and happily ever after?? Maybe, maybe not.

This is a clever story as subversive as any of the original fairytales but Disney sanitised fluff (not that I don’t enjoy that!) this most certainly is not. It’s extremely well written, the style and descriptions are lively, colourful and engaging. It’s funny in places with plenty of modern day references that really stand out. There are fun elements like the stories of Brie and Nibbles, Cinderella’s mice and their descendants and I especially like Queen Gertrude the leader of the Valkyrie mice! There’s talking, rushing teapots with an endless supply of tea, there’s a fairy godmother and magic mirrors. However, there’s a very dark side too. The prince is ... well, not very princely in his behaviour, in fact he’s a cad and a bounder! There’s lie built upon lie in an empty cardboard life and sex, drugs and rock n’roll. Ok, I lied about the rock n’roll. There’s dark magic aplenty, right paths, wrong paths, reality versus fantasy, enchantment, curses and wicked deviousness. What, you expected a happy ending? As it reaches its conclusion that’s where the story reveals its particular, twisty cleverness as the truth of two worlds colliding reveals itself to one and all and the ‘princess’ makes some realisations and sees things how they really are.

Overall, an enjoyable and different read which transports you to some magic in a land not too far away and allows you to shut of the reality of right now for a few entertaining hours. Great fun with a good message too! Recommended.

With thanks to NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton for the arc for an honest review.

[Brandice · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the idea of The Charmed Wife, a modern retelling of the classic Cinderella story, still including some elements of magic.

The premise held a lot of promise — 13 years into her marriage with Prince Charming, Cinderella is unhappy and wants out. She’s followed all the fairy tale rules and her husband isn’t the charming the man she thought she married. She seeks the help of a witch, who creates love potions for women dissatisfied in their current relationships. While there, Cinderella changes her mind about what she wants, spinning the story in another direction.

Unfortunately, it missed the mark for me. I struggled to stay interested in the story about Cinderella’s flashbacks to earlier times, her current situation, and the side story of her companion mice. The Charmed Wife wasn’t necessarily hard to follow but did jump around a lot. I don’t mind dark, which this was, but it just didn’t hold my attention like I hoped.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not what you think it is. To tell you more would give away its surprises. Careful readers will wonder at what’s coming when they get to certain aspects. I’d love to say what these are, but the sense of uncertainty I felt while reading is key to what I liked so much. I found it enthralling, especially in how the story is moved forward.

Some of the themes are similar to those in the author’s Forty Rooms, though they’re treated differently. The themes are dark, but there’s also lots of humor, including humor that will turn dark at its next mention.

I’m drawn to fairytale retellings but, more often than not, I’m disappointed by them. I need a good reason for them to exist. Here multiple fairytales (and nursey rhymes like the “old woman who lived in a shoe”) and their elements are put to excellent use. I was excited when I came upon this book’s version of my favorite fairytale growing up, ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses.’ It’s not as well known as others, but I’ve long felt it’s ripe for (re)interpretation.

I didn’t read fairytales as a child for the so-called happy endings (many of them didn’t have that anyway), but for the outlandish stories that came before the ending. I wasn’t an adventurous child; it was always about what was in my mind. And this is a perfect (adult) rendition of that kind of mentally adventurous journey.

[Faith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not the right audience for this book. The long interludes about the talking mice Brie and Nibbles were unbearable, and the parts about the naive and whiny Cinderella were only slightly better. I was hoping for a sharp, clever story about what “happily ever after” really means, but this book is more of a jumbled mess about a woman who insists on being the victim in her own story and who has read too many fairy tales. In case you care about such things, characters are shamed for their weight, age and appearance generally. 2.5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

[Kristi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the oddest yet most compelling books I’ve read this year. The Charmed Wife is a Cinderella retelling but it’s no HEA, instead, it reads like Cinderella is tripping balls down Alice’s rabbit hole. Thirteen and a half years go by for Cinderella after she’s married Prince Charming, thirteen and a half long years of some seriously messed up shit. She’s at a crossroads between a moral choice that will change her life when the story begins. It’s through past events and reflection that Cinderella delivers some insight on just what went wrong and why it took her so long to notice that her HEA wasn’t so happy.

I grappled at first seeing Cinderella as a middle-age version, waking up one day to find that she’s been miserable and that her fairytale ending actually ended shortly after the wedding. The reality of what came after; children being raised by a nanny goat, an inattentive negligent husband, and the inevitable aging lead to a less than desired life and a sense of emptiness. The naïve girl remained and she became a naïve woman until her eyes were opened to some of the harsher facts of life. Painful surely but leading to her actual growth as a woman. The author challenges some of the well-known secondary roles in a fascinating way; the ugly step-sisters, the fairy Godmother and of course, Prince Charming himself aren’t exactly who we’ve been led to believe they are.

Grushin challenges every ideal in the fairytale floofiness we’re spoon fed as children. She explores the unrealistic side of relationships that are literally built on nothing but instant attraction. The author points this out beautifully when Cinderella looks back on just why she’s so unhappy. A pretty face, a glass shoe that fits and a few dances does not make for a solid relationship. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good fairytale as much as the next person but as I get older, I’m enjoying the tales where the princess saves herself much more.

The Charmed Wife challenges a lot of widely held ideals about romantic notions and HEA in classic fairytales that are outdated and need some refreshing. I think this is a book for our times and Ms. Grushin delivers a beautifully subversive writing that challenges the old using a clever and witty narrative.

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

My last book before embarking on the Booker longlist was an unexpected delight, given the mixed reviews I have seen - it has been a while since a book had be laughing aloud so often, and the ending is unexpectedly moving.

This is Grushin's fourth novel, and the third I have read, and all of those are very different - I particularly enjoyed her debut novel The Dream Life of Sukhanov. This one takes its cue from the likes of Angela Carter (The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories) and A.S. Byatt (The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye) in its clever use of fairy tale tropes and cliches, the subversion of the genre and its exploration of why fairy tales were needed and created.

The starting point is Cinderella, several years after the happily ever after moment, when she is becoming increasingly bored of life in a palace with a prince who has no interest in her. What Grushin does brilliantly is to confound the reader's expectations at almost every turn, and I liked the way the story moved closer to reality and the modern world near the end.

The interludes telling the stories of the mice Brie and Nibbles provide much of the humour, and the fairytale references go much wider than Cinderella.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 an older children’s story akin to the Disney Twisted Tale series (but then the spikier messages about relationships and age inappropriate material aren't suitable), 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.

Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.

[Maria Roxana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Am ales această carte din dorința de a citi ceva mai ușor, ceva care să nu mă solicite prea mult, căci na, la mine perioada aceasta nu prea se confundă cu lecturile greoaie.

Pe copertă ni se spune că este o reinterpretare a Cenușăresei astfel că mi-am zis "Mhmm, pare a fi ceva de poveste, e perfect pentru această perioadă!" Și da, este și poveste, dar și o invitație la introspecție în legătură cu relațiile pe care le dezvoltăm cu persoanele din viața noastră. Nu m-am întrebat niciodată dacă Cenușăreasa chiar l-a iubit pe prinț, ori dacă acea căsătorie cu el nu cumva a fost singura opțiune care ar fi putut să îi ofere o nouă viață departe de familia în care nu se simțea nici iubită, nici acceptată. Povestea imaginată de autoare este una care se regăsește chiar și în viață, nu doar în basme. O poveste de la care chiar nu aveam așteptări atunci când am ales să o citesc, dar pe care chiar nu regret că am îmbrățișat-o într-o zi de Crăciun. Au și basmele metaforele lor, nu?

[Elke · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow... I did not like this book at all. Not even a little. It's supposed to be a Cinderella retelling but it ended up being a weird mix of fairytale storytelling combined with modern day stuff. It confused me most of the time and the way things were being described was way too over the top for my liking. Not to mention the dull, one dimensional characters. Nope.

[Berit☀️✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

What happens after the happily ever after? This is the story of Cinderella after she finds out that prince charming is basically a complete fraud. A cad in prince’s clothing. The story picks up 13 years after Cinderella and Prince charming say I do. Cinderella is now the mother of two and rarely sees her prince. this leads Cinderella to seek the help of an evil witch and sends this fairytale spiraling. A dark and modern twist with a splash of humor.

OK there was a lot I liked about this book, but I have to say it did not hold my attention very well. Now I am going to take complete ownership of that because I was wanting a fun humorous take on Cinderella after the happily ever after. this book was much more cerebral with a lot of social commentary especially on gender norms. I loved how the stepsisters, the godmother, the evil witch, and the mice were portrayed in this book. These characters were portrayed so differently it was a great inventive Twist on the original fairytale. And this probably leads to the biggest problem I had with this story, it just wasn’t an actual retailing. I don’t even think that’s what the author was intending, and that’s totally fine it just didn’t work for me personally. there were just so many little subtle nuances throughout the story that didn’t enhance the reading experience for me, they just left me confused. I think this was a well written well executed story it just was not the story for me.

*** Big thank you to G. P. Putnam for my gifted copy of this book. All opinions are my own. ***

[Vonda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited for the opportunity of reading this book as I love the retelling of fairy tales. This was a tragedy. It was a difficult read, it retold supposedly the tale of Cinderella. It wasn't though. It is 13 years into the marriage of Cinder and the Prince. This was just another wife trying to escape a cruel, cheating husband.. No fairy tale, no magic...just bad writing.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

The fairy tale Cinderella—as envisioned by Walt Disney—has shaped the dreams of millions of young girls, who dream they will one day, they, too, will find their Prince Charming and live happily ever after.

But wait! What if Prince Charming turned out to be not quite so…charming? What if Cinderella got “woke” years later to find that she had traded in her own dreams to live a sterile life with an unhappy man who ignored and at times despised her? In other words – what if Cinderella became trapped in her own fairy tale? And what if, above all else, she wanted her prince dead?

This audaciously imaginative, wildly creative and lyrically written new novel by Olga Grushin is a true marvel. It’s populated with all the archetypes and legends of fairy tales—the witches, the fairy godmother, the dancing mice (who have delightful back stories of their own), the stepsisters (who turn out to be nowhere as bad as Cinderella imagined.) Hints of other fairy tales abound—Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, Hansel & Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood—and are woven seamlessly into the narrative.

In a fairy tale world, Ms. Grushin suggests, things are run by their own logic. Young maidens are always beautiful and fair and princes and kings are always valent or sometimes, blood-thirsty. Witches weave spells and stepsisters are evil. And woe to the fairy tale character who tries to break out of this preordained life.

But, the author suggests, if fairy tales constrict—and they do—doesn’t a princess feel more clearheaded, awake and present when she embraces her messy real-life possibilities—filled with hope and promise and unpredictability? Don’t true-life "fairy tales" occur when we break free from the battling the tedium of stale fairy-tale coupledom? And aren't there bound to be greater rewards awaiting the generations of unhappy women who collectively try to dream themselves into a life that transforms the chaos of pain into some kind of order—while giving up something important in the process?

Cinderella, then, becomes every woman who gives away her freedom and her fire—her untold stories and her future selves—in exchange for a “handsome prince” and a big house to call home. Without ever stretching herself beyond her one-dimensional role, no wonder her prince begins to feel stifled too.

We, the readers, never do know Cinderella’s real name until she goes through her own Hero’s Journey and emerges with realizations of who she really is and what she really wants. Her rewards: her name, which lifts her out of the stereotype and introduces her as a flesh-and-blood woman. I am thrilled to be an early reader, and thank Catapult and NetGalley for an ARE in exchange for an honest review.

[Jordan (Jordy’s Book Club) · Rating 4 out of 5]

QUICK TAKE: definitely an unexpectedly fun read...a look at what happens AFTER Happily Ever After, in particular what happens to Cinderella after she marries Prince Charming? I was not expecting this one to go in the VERY adult direction that it did, but I thought this book was dark and clever and a lot of fun. The sections about Cinderella's mice are worth the price of admission alone.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 5 out of 5]

A certain mood flares or the moon beams, and I’m keen for an adult fairy tale--in this case, a fractured fairy tale (remember those?). I slipped gently into Grushin’s twisted, clever, and lyrical morality tale--a supple and exuberant allegory of women, their choices, and their consequences.

What happens in a fairy tale that ends with, “And they lived happily ever after?” That’s more of a prognostication than a destiny. In THE CHARMED WIFE, a princess is not living happily ever after, and against all odds, she aims to undo her fate. Grushin’s depth and facility with language eclipses the clichés that lesser writers would fall into with this genre. Instead of just one plot line here, there are several subplots, with familiar tropes inverted, offering a surreal and sometimes disturbing portrait of a royal life.

Jane, after 13 years of marriage and two children with her “Prince Charming,” (Roland), is fed up. As much as she loves her children, she detests Roland’s philandering ways and condescending, cruel treatment toward her. She seeks out a witch and asks for release, in the most un-fairy-tale-like way. Enter the fairy godmother, also. In fact, it isn’t just Cinderella here, but references and events of Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Jack and the Beanstalk, and so many other fairy tales that we grew up with, that make cameo and poignant appearances.

As Jane begins her journey, the reader is taken back and forth through the years of their marriage. The reader has to keep up, and concentrate--unlike the usual fairytales that you can read and recite in your sleep. Grushin’s prose is as silken as a princess’ dress, so I slid with alacrity down the slippery slope of fairy tale corrections. Corrections, that is, of the falsity of “happy ever after,” which the author redresses with biting wit and wisdom.

At times, the passages are linguistically surreal, metaphorical, and poetical, in ways that evoke an almost physical display of thoughts. This is a princess who is initially thoughtless, covetous, naïve, and indolent. Her journey carries her deep in the weeds of her interior self, a place she had denied and declined to reside until the palace felt more like a prison and her riches like privation. Jane eventually confronts a different kind of magic and reality.

“Magic hung thick on the air, almost visible, like a sheen of green moonlight that made everything slightly distorted, shimmering and shifting—and she sensed this magic to be completely unlike any she had known before. For the ordinary brand of godmother magic was thinly spread, civilized as a powdered wig, harmless as a drop of liqueur after a four-course meal, whimsical as glass footwear, and entirely pedestrian in its dabbling, domestic purposes of comfort and matrimony. This magic felt uncanny—denser, older, much more hidden, and much less certain; though whether it was light or dark, she could not tell.”

Dip your toe into the fanciful fable, the awesome allegory, and the willowy prose of Olga Grushin. From Cinderella to Little Red Riding Hood, and multitudes between, the author includes the idea of many fairy tales into one morality tale, and she does it with her fertile mind and her magic whimsy. At the end, the “happily ever after” motto has pivoted to an enlightened outcome.

Thank you to Putnam and NetGalley for my advanced copy.

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany)]

This book has some interesting ideas, but at least for me it kind of failed in the execution. That said, it's the sort of thing I could see people having very polarized reactions too.

What if many years and two children into marriage, Cinderella wanted her husband dead? This book plays on fairytales, but in a trippy way that sometimes doesn't know what it wants to be. I found Cinderella in part one to be painfully bland and naive, and these lengthy interludes about her mice were kind of insufferable. Part 2 was better, but ends up getting very didactic and on the nose. Plus we have lots of fatphobia, villification of women preyed on by the MC's husband as if they're at fault for his infidelity, and the use of the word g*psy instead of Romani, alongside fetishized portrayals of them. In some ways this feels like tepid white feminism that's mostly concerned with the problems of the privileged and I had a hard time caring. More to come in a video .

[Cynema · Rating 1 out of 5]

CINDERELLA FANTASY TURNED NIGHTMARE … NOT YOUR MAMA’S FAIRYTALE

[UPDATE 2/6/2021: This is the kind of author I steer clear of. Since posting this review, she singled me out and posted a series of snide/backhanded comments such as "the review was an individual opinion and not fit to address for an author", then deleted all her posts so no one could read them, and deflected them all by gaslighting me about the intent of what her comments actually conveyed. I stand behind this review 100% with specifics to back it up. I could have added alot more. Reviewers have the right to review and this is a reviewer's forum.]

“Storytellers are dangerous fools, and my eyes are wide open now”

THE CHARMED WIFE is a just a cardboard fairytale that read like a jumbled mess caught in a time warp. A fractured version of the iconic Cinderella tale told freakishly like Alice in Wonderland or the acid trip of Disney’s Fantasia with a malicious side. Both story and execution are a hot mess with barely a hint of the classic fairytale, and one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. Every page made me itch to skim ahead and get it over with, but I didn’t and lost 3 days of my life plodding through an uninvolving story for an eyeball rolling conclusion that was not only depressingly downbeat, but obvious from the beginning. It may have been one of my most anticipated reads of 2021, but it ended up being one of the worst. What was the publisher thinking?

The cover made me think it was a modernized version, but not so fast. Slogging through Cinderella’s tormented marriage was painful at best. It’s been 13 years and 2 kids since the HEA beginning of her marriage to romantic and handsome Prince Roland, which gave early promise to all the enchantment and fairytale love that the original fairytale had to offer. Both are now mid-30s. In this topsy-turvy version, she’s a clueless simp in denial and virtually estranged from her dastardly prince. Living in a fantasy bubble in the castle and clinging desperately to her faded HEA … until she discovers his numerous infidelities. Yes the prince CHEATS. Some Prince Charmless. Cold, mean and actually a dirty sex addict jerk that sleeps with everything that walks behind her back, and doesn’t have the time of day for her or the kids. She’s never been kissed since their first night together, and he hasn’t graced her bed since conception of their firstborn. Yet she still clings to the fairytale image. Once her eyes are opened though …

Still with me? The book opens with the dispirited princess wanting him dead, and in search of a curse to do it. What happens is how this all plays out in domino fashion from the consequences of her actions. The characters all have different names in this version and switch back and forth from good to evil (even witches and the Fairy Godmother), all while “Cinderella” goes down an Alice in Wonderland-styled rabbit hole to figure out what went wrong in her marriage and who’s to blame. It’s a jumbled mash-up journey of several fairytales and characters, and the time period was so amorphous that I couldn’t tell whether this was old timey or modern, dreams or real, wishful thinking or actual reality. One minute she’s wearing gowns and slippers and living by candle light … and the next she’s talking about cars and trains and seeking a divorce and child custody in Manhattan. The Russian author doesn’t know that American divorces do not have trials.

The self-indulgent writing read very foreign and offbeat, as Cinderella’s search goes deep psychologically and comes at the fairytale spin from different angles and versions of it, most of which are dark and downbeat. My head was spinning, a bit like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. Cinderella’s evolution was not illuminating or uplifting or entertaining. I was glad when it was over and depressed by the gutting of the original version. The cracked fairytale and non-HEA was filled with boring details, unnecessary minutiae, and story tangents. Too strange for me. MORAL OF THE STORY: It’s all in the perspective.

[Gabriela Pistol · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ce naiba tocmai am citit? (in fine, 1/3 + ultimul capitol). Cred ca tocmai am trecut prin prima mea chick-lit din viata de adult.
Ceva umor si "istetime" de Cosmo (tin minte ca asa i se zicea in revistele pentru femei, istetime, nu cumva sa zicem ca femeile sunt inteligente), combinata in mod ridicol cu fantasy (mai mult tulburare mintala).
Stiu ca unii oameni zic ca din orice carte inveti ceva. Dar eu nu sunt unul dintre oamenii aia (care se pacalesc singuri sau au mult timp de pierdut, daca ma intreaba cineva), iar cartea asta e o pierdere de timp. Si nu pot sa cred ca aceeasi femeie a scris Viața din visele lui Suhanov.

[Titi Coolda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Am citit cartea asta pentru că mi-au plăcut tot timpul poveștile și adeseori ,în copilărie, îmi continuam propria poveste după ce autorul punea ultimul punct. Grushin face exact același lucru. Ba mai mult, nu doar continuă povestea ci,de-a dreptul, face un mix de povești întrepătrunse armonios în structura narativă, glisând în final într-o istorie contemporană atât de larg întâlnită, divorțul.

[Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

'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 to that and a great big yes to a different take. 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.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Charmed wife by Olga Grushin is adult retelling of the time after Cinderella got her man the prince and lived happily after.
After 13 and a half years of marriage to the Prince and two children later Cinderella is had enough of the marriage. The Prince and herself live separate lives and live-in different side of the castle. He never sees his children and they do not talk to each other. She wants more to her life. She wants the prince dead but when she meets a witch but, thing don’t always go to plan.
The story starts the same fairy-tale style, with snippets of other tales thrown in. It is beautifully written book but then for the second half of the story it gets too modern with talk of divorce and custody which I wasn’t expecting at all. I also found this book hard to get into. It wasn’t the magical tale that we all know and love and this is definitely NOT for children. Three stars from me.

[Story · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I was dazzled by the form of this story--multiple re-tellings of Cinderella--and the way the author wove together women's lived experience, fairy tales and time--both historical time and the stages of a woman's life. Having said that, the story did drag in places and I skimmed a bit to get to the end.

[Mihaela · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5*

[Maira Bakenova · Rating 5 out of 5]

What happens after a happy ending?

Cinderella’s married life in the palace seems like an endless loop of idle eating and dancing, her husband's never present or invariably distant, her children her only joy she may soon lose.
The tone of the book is an odd, in all the positive ways, combination of fairy tale and a realistic narrative voice of an unhappily married woman, fuelled by her misery and the newfound decisiveness to end it.

It is both sad and refreshing to witness the well-known version of Cinderella reimagined as a miserable woman in her mid-thirties, struggling to make sense of her bleak happily ever after. I applaud the author’s vision and her take on other familiar characters. No one, not the Prince, not the evil stepsisters, not even the Fairy Godmother are what we’re used to.

The occasional cuttings to Cinderella’s mice’s personal lives feel like fun interludes but somewhat unnecessary, nonetheless, overall, the structure of the novel is skilfully accomplished. We begin with a brief overview of the story we already know and then dive right into The Charmed Wife’s narrative, with appropriately timed and placed flashbacks, each told in a fairy tale manner and welcoming some more unexpected yet familiar faces. My personal favourite is the Witch, who, as many others, is not at all what you would expect.

Sometimes, it is hard to tell what is real or not, just as Cinderella struggles to tell reality from her fantasy. Here our world and fairy tale are transposed on one another to show that magic cannot solve everything, true love is not the same as lust or infatuation, and making excuses for others is a futile endeavour that nourishes hate, and “hate traps you as much as love does.”

The novel touches on the subject (which has been bothering me for quite some time) of the Prince having the whole kingdom trying on the glass slipper until finding the girl it would fit, essentially, any girl with the appropriate shoe size. “Would he have even known the difference?” Cinderella ponders. At some point, she begins to acknowledge the power of choice and what true love really feels like, which is far from feeling like “some misplaced piece of luggage” that needed retrieving with a glass slipper acting as a luggage tag.

The novel challenges the outdated conviction that goes in line with the “middle-aged certainties” of Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother, that marrying rich is every woman’s ultimate goal. Of course, true love does exist. But it is not shallow, it is not just about the looks, interminable gifts, and possessions, but something much deeper that would never take away your dignity. There are many “beautiful beginnings”, but not all make for a beautiful ending.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine meets Once Upon a Time with a darker twist, the novel is tragic, funny, and refreshingly unexpected. You will not be disappointed.

[Grace A. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I must admit, this book defies traditional fairy tale conventions. To say I was bewildered by the story's complexity would be an understatement. It's a narrative labyrinth, a fusion of various fairy tales, all with women at their core, with Cinderella as the focal point.

I couldn't help but question the boundaries between reality and imagination. Was Cinderella under a curse or a charm? Her claims of love for her children seemed at odds with the years she devoted to breaking her curse, leaving me perplexed. And when the divorce papers arrived, her profound grief for her children, despite her prior choices, left me with mixed emotions.

In essence, it appears to be a tale of a marriage that has unraveled into bitterness and animosity, with their unfortunate children caught in the crossfire. While I grappled with the confusion of the narrative, I couldn't help but empathize with Cinderella's plight though, given the despicable and unfaithful nature of her husband.
It was a confusing read to say the least but intriguing nonetheless. 2.5 stars.

[octav · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought I was gonna love it when I read the synopsis. And I had really high hopes. I ended up being so disappointed and I am so jealous on the people who loved this! I really wanted to like this book, but just couldn’t.

[Davida Chazan · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5 stars (updated)!

I know I almost never read fantasy books, but something about this one being a story about what happens after the fairy tale of Cinderella ends drew me in. I liked it a whole lot more than I thought I would, to be honest. Here's my review https://tcl-bookreviews.com/2021/01/2...

[Skylar · Rating 1 out of 5]

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.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always believed the ‘traditional’ fairy-tales and stories that were spoon-fed from a very young age (to myself and older generations) were ultimately damaging for girls. To grow up expecting to be saved, or looked after, is dangerous. Even if you know it’s ‘only’ a story, you are still subtly conditioned to feel less important, which, if not rooted out before adulthood, can change how you approach relationships – if a relationship doesn’t start out on an equal footing, it is usually doomed. This novel illustrates beautifully how toxic this fairy-tale crap can be when it manifests in real life. Thankfully, these days, those types of role models are slowly being squeezed out of the picture.

The premise is that we are reunited with ‘Cindarella’ after she has been married to Prince Charming for 13 (unhappy) years. The writing is wonderful as always with Olga Grushin; she is one of my fave modern writers. It’s not a cosy read – I found the magical aspect quite dark and slightly menacing throughout, although not overtly – but it was addictive!

As you progress through the novel, you start to see the story gradually taking shape - fantasy blending with reality (this blend emphasises the sense of disorientation and unease). It was fascinating to see a modern take on the behaviour of these fairy-tale characters; there is not only Cinderella here, but snippets of many others – all shown from an alternative angle. Baba Yaga makes an interesting appearance too.

So, beware of falling into the trap of the fairy-tale expectation - don’t put ridiculous pressure on yourself to achieve ‘happily ever after’ at the expense of wasting your life.

Beautifully written, thought-provoking and original. Very much a book for our times - recommended!

I got this on Netgalley, thank you.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keep an open mind when reading this book. It’s captivating, imaginative and extremely strange in a magical way! Most of us grew up reading fairytales with beautiful princesses, handsome princes, ugly ogres and witches, potions, and happily-ever-afters. Throw all this out the window and enter a world where Prince Charming is unfaithful, Cinderella restless, godmothers and witches are not what they seem. And those mice sure have a story of their own! This book is not for everyone but if you read it I guarantee that you will question all the fairy tales and their happy ideal endings that you read as a child! It’s an unique story with a couple of dark surprises!