You cannot be serious! No, really!

Having read the blurb for ‘Lost (Cinderella's Secret Witch Diaries Book 1)’, I thought it would prove interesting that the book is written in the form of a diary and I was curious as to how this would work given that we are talking of the time of Napoleon.

Since the Cinderella story most of us know is based on ‘Cendrillon’ you kind of expect the prince and royal family to be based in France – which clearly would not be possible in this case as the French Revolution had put paid to that. I did expect we would be talking about a setting in another European country bordering on France. But no!

Incredibly we are talking about England, which doesn’t make sense as that would mean King George III and Queen Charlotte were on the throne and it’s not as if they only had one son. There is a date inconsistency because according to this book Josephine had purchased the Chateau de Malmaison the year before. That was actually done in April 1799 – so this means Cinderella’s visit to Josephine takes place in April 1800. Therefore, the book is not actually set in the late 1700s as the description states. George, Prince of Wales (the one who became George IV), married Caroline of Brunswick in 1795 and they had a daughter, Princess Charlotte of Wales, in 1796.

I started out with high hopes, but had them dashed. Whilst I am frequently able to suspend my disbelief, I really can’t in this case. There is just too much incongruity and it really doesn’t work for me. I also found this particular Cinderella to be really annoying. She whines an awful lot. In addition, the story about the Silver Fox started to become a bit too silly and went on and on, making me want to scream.

I got the Audible book and the e-book around the same time so I did listen as well as read. Unfortunately, that made it a bit more of an ordeal, as the complaining and whining is obviously accentuated when listening to the diary entries.

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