Review: Ash by Melinda Lo

Continuing on my unintentional binge on re-tellings of fairy tales (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty), this holiday I also read Ash, a retelling of Cinderella.  From Melinda Lo's Website:

In the wake of her father’s death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, re-reading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.

The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King’s Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash’s capacity for love—and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love. Entrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.

• Originality: 6. Cinderella and fairies.  New spin.  What is it with fairies and YA fiction?  Authors love fairies. O yea, and Ash doesn't fall for the prince, New spin X2.
• Absurdity: 4. I am giving this a low score, because coming into this you have to have low absurdity bar because you know it is already a fairy tale
• Level of Paranormal Romance: 7.  Higher then normal because of her love for both Sidhean, who has his own scary fairy charm, and Kaisa, who is a beautiful huntress.  A new love triangle for the fairy tales.  And the prince?  We are not impressed.  But more so, this book is more about Ash, and her struggle to find herself, and though the romance is part of the story, I don't think it is the whole story
• Level of Harry Potterness: 7  A Cinderella who lives in a world of fairies and falls in love with another girl?  Unexpected, but it was well written and Ash is confused and in love and struggling with fairies and evil step sisters in a surprisingly relatable way, and this is coming from a girl who has just one sister who she likes, doesn't have to do physical labor, and probably would have fallen for the prince (if not the fairy king).

I liked it.  It is different but the same.  Give it a try.