Oh, you think you know Cinderella? She loses a shoe and in exchange gets a prince…

Here’s a double book that tells all – the stepmother’s tale vs. Ella’s diary of the events. This is a dark fairy tale adaptation for a more adult (18+) audience in the vein of Sarah Pinborough’s Charm and Jackson Pearce’s Sweetly.

STEPMOTHER: Three step-kids with magic abilities and a license to be evil? Yes, please.

With a restaurant to run, Ella to boss around and a cannibalistic witch to befriend, Grace seems to have made the bargain of a life-time. If it wasn’t for one estranged husband, the lying mirrors and Ella’s teen romances getting completely out of hand. Also, there seems to be a part of the bargain Grace might be forgetting, while her son’s third birthday is approaching. Fast.

ELLA: I used to love fairy-tales until I was in one. Thanks, Mother, for upping and leaving to chase after some man. Now I’m stuck with my stepmother and an absentee Father. “Ella do this and Ella do that!” I wish Aunt Mellie, my godmother would whisk me away from the drudgery of my common existence. I can’t wait to turn 18, finish school and leave this place. Mellie insists I need to marry an aristo, but I want to…just figure out what I can do, who I could be, where I could live. Because it definitely isn’t doing chores, serving dinner to stepmother’s clients and living in this hovel we nominally call a castle. I wish…for a miracle.

Can Grace be the necessary evil that gets Ella her dream? What did she get in the bargain? And why are guardian angels and the Fae Queen involved? Again.