Review: The Ugly Stepsister by Aya Ling

The Ugly Stepsister by Aya Ling
Series: Standalone
Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy
Length: 452 pages
Published on 12th June 2015
Purchase: Amazon | B&N | The Book Depository
Aya Ling: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads
Received from author via Xpresso Book Tours

Synopsis:
When Kat accidentally rips apart an old childhood picturebook, she's magically transported into the world of Cinderella--as Katriona, one of the ugly stepsisters! To get back, she'll have to complete the story, right to the end of happily ever after. But the odds are huge: the other stepsister is movie-star gorgeous, the fairy godmother is nowhere to be found, and the prince isn't interested in marrying any time soon. Can she ever return to the real world?

The Ugly Stepsister, as you may have guessed, is a retelling of Cinderella but this time we get to see it from one of the ugly stepsisters point of view, only she's not quite herself either.

This book follows Kat who is a regular girl, living in our regular world until she accidentally rips an old book and falls into the world of Cinderella, taking the place of Katriona. 

She is visited that night by a Goblin who I guess is like her own fairy godmother in a twisted sense, he explains for her to be able to return to her own world she has to see the story through to the end and make sure Cinderella's story comes true but that he has no way of knowing where abouts in the story she currently is nor how to help to make this happen.

See? The premise is pretty great, and I so much wanted to love this book and be able to rave about it but I'm struggling.

The writing is great and the characters seem interesting enough - Ella isn't actually the step-daughter, the Prince doesn't want to marry anyone, and the other ugly sister is annoying as hell.

But Kat? I just can't connect with her or how she's viewing this world, I understand to suddenly be dropped in this world would be confusing and difficult to adapt too but there is just something about her that I'm struggling to connect too.

I've read 25% of this book, honestly I would've DNF it a lot earlier but as its a fairly long book I agreed to read a quarter of it to see how I then felt, and I still just don't have the urge to finish it even though I do want to know whats up with the Prince and lack of Fairy Godmother?

I've also figured out one of my own reason as to why this is happening. I have a terrible book hangover. I tried reading this at the same time as Heir of Fire but it just wasnt happening because I was already so invested with that series, and of course my copy of Queen of Shadows hasn't arrived yet hence the hangover.

I feel like cause I'm in the stupid fangirl stage of that series I'm not able to give my full attention to this book, or well any other book that I've also been struggling to get through.

So whilst I'm going to "did not finish" this at the moment its really more of a "on hold", I can still see it having some potential and hopefully I can pick this up at the end of the year with a fresh view on it.

3 stars / 5 stars