It's about connections and something more. GILDED ASHES has that same amazing connection, and I loved seeing Maia and Lord Anax enjoy one another's company and conversations. It's not a matter of running into the girl at the ball, seeing a pretty face, and knowing nothing about one another. One of the reasons I love Gail Carson Levine's ELLA ENCHANTED and the movie Ever After is because Cinderella knew the prince beforehand. But Maia never anticipates that she'll begin looking forward to these daily encounters. If she can get her stepsisters out of the house, it's two less people her mother can destroy. When her stepsister Koré orders Maia to deliver letters to Lord Anax so that he'll fall in love with her brains and choose her as his future bride, Maia is more than happy to do so. Maia is so, so afraid of what her mother's anger may unleash, and has to pretend constantly to be happy in order to appease her. The only problem? She has the ability to destroy anyone, and hinders Maia's ability to truly be happy in life.

Maia's mother made a deal with the Gentle Lord on her deathbed to protect her daughter at all costs.

GILDED ASHES is a complete stand-alone story. But GILDED ASHES eased me into the concept of a dark being who makes horrifying deals, and now that I know CRUEL BEAUTY is partially his story, I'm even more intrigued! I'm really glad I read GILDED ASHES first! I wasn't in the right frame of mind and shelved it, perhaps because I didn't understand the references to the Gentle Lord. I tried picking the novel up a couple of months ago and couldn't get more than a couple of pages into it. In fact, I read the novella first! I think it actually enhanced my interest in CRUEL BEAUTY. You don't have to read CRUEL BEAUTY in order to read GILDED ASHES. I was more than pleased to hand over money for this e-novella! That isn't the case with GILDED ASHES, however. Now, when I see a novella alongside a full-length novel, I'm immediately wary. Even moreso if it's a 'prologue' that explains or rehashes necessary information via a flashback from the main character or from another character's POV. I'm used to many of these e-novellas being half promotional material for published novels, with little original content. I was surprised and pleased with the amount of depth in Rosamund Hodge's novella GILDED ASHES.

Gilded Ashes by Rosamund Hodge