A review by CJ Dee
Angel is a 16 year old cook’s daughter who dreams of becoming a fashion designer. Lily is the daughter of the man who employs Angel’s mother. They are the very best of friends. So when Lily’s nearly stepsister steals Angel’s Teen Couture designs to pass off as her own, Lily has a plan to save the day.
Angel takes Lily’s place as a guest in Lily’s estranged grandmother’s home during the Paris fashion season. The conspiring girls aim to have Angel sneak in to switch the stepsister’s knock off designs with her own originals. What they don’t anticipate is that Angel would fall in love along the way.
The overall plot of The Cinderella Moment is an interesting concept, but it was also predictable and derivative. It wasn’t even particularly derivative of its namesake as I had expected. There were subtle nods here and there, but most of them felt like desperate attempts to make the story fit the name.
Unfortunately, The Cinderella Moment is much longer than it should have been. There is a lot of telling done when the author should be showing. There is even more overly detailed descriptions of clothes. I get it. She’s a girl who digs fashion. That doesn’t mean I want to read paragraph long descriptions of many, many, MANY ensembles, dresses and other various couture … things?
The dialogue. Oh, my. The dialogue. There is a lot. So much dialogue. Large chunks of dialogue that just carry on inanely.
The characters have no real depth. Angel has the most but only because we spend most of our time in her head listening to her obsess over her internal conflict at lying to everyone and wanting to share her secret with the boy she loves but will he ever forgive her and … zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Snark aside, I am not the target audience for The Cinderella Moment. I generally do not read YA novels and I generally do not read romance novels, so a combination was never going to be something I loved. Despite this, I would have liked to be able to objectively say “despite my general preference, this is a good YA romance novel” or “I’m not the target audience but I really enjoyed how this was done regardless”. But I just can’t.
I think if you are a YA romance fan, The Cinderella Moment would still be worth looking into. Just be warned that there is a lot of fashion description, a lot of minutiae described in great detail and a lot of dialogue.
I gave the Cinderella Moment to CJ because she loves Cinderella and all things Disney. My bad. — Editor
Rating: 3/5
ISBN-13: 9780143568216
ISBN-10: 0143568213
Format: Paperback, 287 pages
Publisher: Penguin (Australia)
