For anyone who has ever felt inadequate in their life...

Isabel should be sailing on a sea of happiness; she is about to win a charming prince. Only she is not the beautiful girl who lost her glass slipper and captured his heart.
She is the ugly, stepsister who cut off her toes to fit into Cinderella's shoe...
The world conspires in a thousand ways to convince us that we are not enough, that something is missing, that life is nothing but a big, endless party on a beach and we have not been invited.
Dark forests? What dark forests? Wolves? What wolves? Don't worry about those. Just buy this, wear that, and you will be included in the list of the invited.
You will be Accepted, Beloved, Happy. Our fairy tales tell us the truth. They reveal something deep and meaningful - that forests are real, dark, and full of wolves. That there will be times when we get lost in their depths.
But these fairy tales also tell us that we are what we need to be, that we have what we need to have - courage, intelligence, maybe even a pocket full of crumbs - to find our way back.

Recalling the darkest, oldest versions of the Cinderella story, Jennifer Donnelly shows us that appearance is subjective and with her unique writing, she sends a marginalized character on a journey of redemption, redefining the concept of beauty.