For my third quarter book review I choose the book Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, written by Gregory Maquire. This novel is a twisted view of the original Cinderella story. The story travels though the life of a young girl named Iris. She is very simple, not beautiful but certainly not ugly. Her mother Margarethe and her sister Ruth are fleeing from London to start a new life in Holland. Iris and her family have no money and nowhere to live. They find a job at the household of Van den Meer. Iris finds herself in a strange world of wealth and ambition. Iris comes to know Van den Meer's daughter Clara who becomes Iris's stepsister when Van den Meer marries Margarethe. Clara is extremely gorgeous but is a strange child. The family goes though many trials and hardships. One of their greatest hardships is that they end up losing all of their money while destroying their family because of lies and deceit. This is a twisted story that doesn't have a happy ending.

Don't be fooled by the beautiful cover of this book or the unique title. In my own opinion this is one of the worst books I have ever read in my entire life. I am a reader who is very open to revised and retold versions of fairytales and all novels. But this novel went to far. It did not follow the Cinderella story at all. It had no plot and was very confusing. One of the elements in this book that bothered me was its use of objects and terms. The author tried to use comparisons of similarity between past and futuristic objects. Maybe he was trying to pull the reader closer into the story by doing this but it didn't work for me.

I like to read books over and over but I never would want to open my eyes to one more page of this book. It was horrible. This book may look inviting, but looks can be deceiving.