Ember
by Bettie Sharpe
Self-published
142 pages, Novella
Dark Fantasy
eBook, Print


Author’s Description:

Everyone loves Prince Charming. They have to—he’s cursed. Every man must respect him. Every woman must desire him. One look, and all is lost.

Ember would rather carve out a piece of her soul than be enslaved by passions not her own. She turns to the dark arts to save her heart and becomes the one woman in the kingdom able to resist the Prince’s Charm.

Poor girl. If Ember had spent less time studying magic and more time studying human nature, she might have guessed that a man who gets everything and everyone he wants will come to want the one woman he cannot have.

Charm is a Curse. Love is a Fire. This story is no fairytale…

Review:

Ember is a free eBook available at http://www.bettiesharpe.com/, although a print version is also available from Lulu.com. The author, Bettie Sharpe, says she wrote the novella for fun and to add content to her website. I’m so glad she did.

This dark and very adult retelling of Cinderella is the way fairy tales should be told. Ember has the kind of darkness reminiscent of the old Russian folk tale of Baba Yaga but it also has humour, light and a depth one just doesn’t find in fairy tales. I say, right on! Children and adults alike want stories about people they can imagine to be real, not flat caricatures; readers want to feel a true connection to storybook characters. This is exactly what Bettie Sharpe delivers.

A well written, entertaining read, Ember is the perfect selection for a stormy afternoon.

Warning: Graphic sex scenes


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2009