An Idiot's Review of The Diary of Modern Cinderella

As you guys know, I typically review fantasy books. However I decided to go with a change of pace and read a slice of life YA called The Diary of Modern Cinderella. I'm sure more than half of you are rolling your eyes at the mere title and saying: "Are you serious, another Cinderella teen drama story? Don't you have a few more brain cells than that, Luka?"

To be fair it's called an idiot's review, what did you expect? In all seriousness this story, written by Ms. Sekina Mayu, has very little to do with the actual overall plot to Cinderella aside from the fact that our main heroine, Risa, get's a stepmother and stepsister after her mother passes away. However her new mother, Riko, is actually kind to her from the get go and her new sister, Chiyu, becomes her bestest friend. Riko doesn't try to replace Risa's original mother, and Risa herself is only angsty after the initial news of her father dating someone else. However her life is tipped over when her father, a superintendent in the police force, get's sent away to Nagasaki on a case and all hell breaks loose as Riko begins to abuse both of her daughters.

I honestly loved reading everything from Risa's point of view. For her everything is usually cut into quick logic thoughts, nothing too complex or over the top. It really felt like I was reading from the mind of a young teenage girl who's confused by her step-mother's strange behavior, and struggling to keep it all a secret. With that said, I would have loved a deeper analysis on how it affected her and more scenes depicting the abuse. Risa ,in general, is a typical girl thrust in an atypical situation, there's no real defining characteristics about her.

Now comes a large problem I had with this novel. A lot of it felt rushed, with little time to actually sit down and let us absorb what was happening, or a real chance to meet the characters. Risa had an advantage since she's the eyes we see everything happening from, but everyone else is foggy and almost one dimensional. Understandably this is a light novel, meaning that you have to read the accompanying novels to get a better idea, but it would still be nice to see how Risa truly viewed them.

All in all this was an interesting take on the Cinderella trope, and is enjoyable as long as you're not going into it expecting a constant barrage of angst and drama.

If you wanna buy the book it can be found here.

I'm gonna go work on the next blog post. I'm so behind....