The great:
Cinder House by Freya Marske - This would've been a better Halloween read as it's a retelling of Cinderella, except poor Cindy--here named Ella--was murdered along with her father by her evil stepmother and is now a ghost haunting Cinder House. A wonderful blend of the fantastic, the spooky, the gothic and the darkly funny, and the ending was brilliant, IMO. Solid A--could've been an A+ but it was only 130 or so pages. I wanted more!
The not so great: A Christmas Pearl by Dorothea Benton Frank - Another slender novel--less than 200 pages--that I thought would be a nice, light, positive Christmas read, but instead, I found it kind of...racist? (ETA: not "kind of". Definitely.) Warning: I'm about to spoil the HECK out of this book...
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Still time to turn back!
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So basically the story is about a 93 year old Southern lady, Theodora (which I realized later was the author's first name, just with syllables swapped) who's living in her gracious family mansion along with her only daughter Barbara and Barbara's husband Cleland. All Theodora wants for Christmas is a good old-fashioned Christmas exactly like she had in her youth, but Barbara is a doormat, Cleland is a cheating wuss, their son George is positively verbally abusive towards his wife Lynette and spoiled brat 10 year old daughter Teddy, and her daughter Camille is a drunk with a spending problem and a son who's frankly the only member of the family I actually liked. Enter a literal ghost: Pearl, the long deceased Black maid of Theodora's youth, who comes back to Earth and uses a combination of Gullah magic and angelic powers to...basically be Theodora's servant all over again. She cooks! She cleans! She decorates! A combination of magical Christmas Eve rum punch that causes everyone to yell at one another and Christmas eggnog that leads to everyone making up causes the family to confront their failings and instantly become better people. I get what the author was trying to say. Christmas was a simpler time back in the day and family is everything. But what she wrote was some real white supremist ish trying to hide behind "nostalgia". I can't believe this book got almost 4/5 stars on Goodreads and agree with the few negative reviews, especially the one at the top of the page. I don't quite think any book is bad enough to earn an F from me but this one was at least a D.
