A friend of mine told me about this challenge where you pick random number between 1 and the amount of books you have in your “to-read” shelf on Goodreads. The number that gets picked, that book you have to read (if you can get ahold of the book).

I decided to try it out straight away and and got number 192. Number 192 was #TheReadCinderella by Yesenia Vargas. I love to dive in to a retelling of Cinderella and started as soon as I’d said goodbye to my friend.

#TheRealCinderella – Yesenia Vargas
Narrator: Kyla Garcia
Series: #BestFriendsForever #1

Synopsis from Goodreads:
Geeky Ella Reyes is at the bottom of the totem pole at Westwood High. Her ultra-popular stepsisters refuse to be seen with her at school, and every day she comes home to a mountain of chores. 

Ella’s only friend (and maybe crush) lives on the other side of her phone’s screen. She and Baller929 know everything about each other, except their real names.

When they have a chance to meet at her school’s Halloween ball, Ella must figure out a way to get there without her stepmom or stepsisters finding out. 

Is revealing her identity to Baller929 worth risking the one good thing left in her life? Or is he too good to be true?

I’m not crying, you’re crying! No but for reals, I got a little teary eyed at the end with the apologizing from the step sisters.

This is a tricky book to rate. On one hand, I got very invested and love the Cinderella type of story. But there are also things that do not really fit nicely in the story. For example, the dress. They had no real indication that the dress was actually for her, they just assumed and took it?

I usually do not complain so much on character development and similar but here it feels like I need to a little bit. She was too nice all the way throughout the story. She was the only one apologizing. Now, it has been a while since I finished this book but in my notes from this book, it seems like the step sisters apologizes to Ella but that she also apologizes (but perhaps can be interpreted as a “I am sorry you felt that way” kind of sorry). The guy though, he did not apologize and that made me a bit mad.

Ella also had a lot of thoughts about her appearance, that she did not look as good as all the other girls in the school and that her glasses was a part of this (she did become a lot pretties without them?). I would have loved to see a much clearer insight that this did not matter, that she would have realized that this does not matter. She does realize that she can save herself but the appearance leaves us hanging. Why do they need to chase the pretty-ness? Also, glasses are not something that makes people less pretty and it is weird that this still is something that authors choose to write.

Initial thought was to give this book a 4, but because of the apologizing and the character development, I think I will leave it at a 2.5 out of 5 stars.