Review: LOVED THIS!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 14, 2014
Rosamund Hodge needs to write more books because I need to read them. A novel and a novella is simply not enough. I fell in love with Cruel Beauty when I read it and was over the moon when I found out we were getting a novella set in the same world. Let me just say that it did not disappoint. I loved this novella and loved getting back into this world. It is not the same characters but this world is just so intriguing and I love it.With this novella we have a Cinderella re-telling and Hodge does it well. It has all the same traits you come to expect with Cinderella, but of course it is much much darker and twisted. I loved Maia, our heroine, and loved how strong and self sacrificing she was. She is living with her mothers bargain and it is not easy on her. She just wants to live out her life without others getting hurt because of her. Our hero is Anax and I must say I loved him. He is very swoony and even in the limited number of pages I fell for him. That boy is just full of the swoon. The kind of swoon that makes you go aww and sigh.While this was a relatively short book, it didn't feel like it. It felt like a full novel and I loved that. It didn't feel lacking or rushed in any way. I was surprised that I even got to know some secondary characters, which isn't typical for a novella. This was just such a well rounded novella and I have so much love for it. I want more from this world. Also, it was interesting seeing Ignifex before Nyx came along and shook up everything he knows; even if all we saw of him was brief.Gilded Ashes was a wonderful novella, probably one of the best I've read. If you are a fan of Cruel Beauty you have to give this novella a go. And if you haven't read Cruel Beauty yet, well you need to go fix that ASAP.