Book Review: Ash

Ash
Malinda Lo

      In the wake of her father’s death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.
The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King’s Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash’s capacity for love—and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.
Entrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief

 

I read this book super-fast… considering I just finished Black City yesterday… I thought the way the book was written was beautiful. It was indeed written to be a fairy tale and also loosely followed the story of Cinderella…without actually following it at all aside step sisters and a father that has died … oh and  a blue dress near the end (is this a spoiler? I don’t know…)
I was not aware that this was a lesbian re-telling of Cinderella however… I managed to not pick that up at all when I read the inside cover (I have the hard cover addition) so that was a huge surprise to me… I was actually really hoping for some human/fairy love because that’s what I thought I was getting myself into but I wasn’t getting myself into it… I was getting myself into something completely different.
The love that exists between Kaisa and Ash really isn’t that detailed… I think they kiss twice in the whole novel and Ash does not even realize she’s in love with Kaisa for what seems like forever… It was an interesting triangle with Sidhean thrown in but I thought his part of the story was cut short considering all the amazingly wonderfully things he had done for Ash over the years… how he guarded her and kept her safe and did so many things to try and make her happy.
I thought Sidhean’s curse was super interesting and I didn’t see that part of the novel coming at all! Yay for twisty turns that I don’t actually see coming (Has anyone else noticed if they read a lot and there is no such thing as a movie with a surprise?)
Over all loved the book, it was beautifully written… very poetic in its descriptions… very elegant in style and taste.  I loved it despite the surprise of Ash not getting with the character I had assumed from the beginning was the main love interest. So I’m actually going to give this 4.5 stars out of 5. It was almost perfect was just hoping for a different love interest or more interest in the love interest I thought was the love interest?