The Crystal Slipper by Selena Fulton

The Basics:
The Crystal Slipper by Selena Fulton
Entangled: Covet
Book One in a fairy tale series
Contemporary Romance
Published September 22, 2014
Source: Received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Amazon Kobo

Why I picked up this book:

I'm a fan of modernized fairy tales.


Blurb:

A single crystal slipper. It was probably the weirdest gift librarian Celinda Branham ever received during a Christmas gift exchange. Who would even wear these in the real world? Not Celinda, wearer of sensible shoes and fairy tale naysayer. That said, she certainly has the requisite wicked stepmother, irritating stepsister, and empty bank account. Of course, if she actually believed in all that fantastical junk, she could wait for her Prince Charming...

Only Prince Charming doesn't exist. 

But Preston Chandler believes in fairy tales. Oh, does he ever. All he did was spurn the 
advances of a certain witch, and now his sister is under a sleeping spell. And the only 
way to break it? Find the other glass slipper and give someone “Love's First Kiss.” But 
when Preston finally tracks down Celinda, he's dismayed to discover that the shy 
librarian who owns the other shoe has no interest in anything remotely resembling 
magic—including love. Now he must find a way into his Cinderella's cynical heart, or 
lose his sister... and his only chance for true love. 

My thoughts:

The Crystal Slipper takes the Cinderella story and modernizes it in, well, some ways. The story features a wealthy English bachelor with a sister who has been put to sleep as revenge by a witch. His attempts to lift the curse involve figuring out the answers to various riddles which lead him to an American librarian who has been hiding her outer beauty but cannot conceal her inner beauty. There's also an evil stepmother, of course, and there's a cast of colorful people clustered around Celinda, including a co-worker who grated on me.

I found the book to be generally repetitive in terms of the couple's development. Preston is consistent, but consistently focused on his sister and saving her. He uses Celinda time and again, constantly ruining romantic moments by referring to their lack of success in lifting the curse. I wanted to shake him. I think if there'd been a time or two when he and Celinda were together and he didn't think of his sister either immediately before or after one of their 'moments', I would have liked him a lot more. 

The riddles themselves were pretty straightforward and it was a bit awkward that Preston wasn't able to see through them a little more - particularly the ones after he'd met Celinda. They did convey a nice fairy tale element above and beyond the curse.

Overall, this was a pretty quick read. Not the best adaptation of Cinderella that I've read - and it meshes in some other fairy tales (Sleeping Beauty, and I was reminded of Beauty and the Beast) - to create a modern love story that I didn't connect with very strongly.

Bottom line:

The Crystal Slipper was an okay read. I didn't dislike it, but it didn't make a huge impression either. Plenty of potential for follow-ups with characters introduced in this book. I recommend it if you can pick it up inexpensively and you like modernized fairy tales.

3.5 stars
For fans of modernized fairy tales, Cinderella, contemporary romance