by Betsy Cornwell
“Waiting On Wednesday” is a weekly event originally hosted on Breaking The Spine.
Title: Mechanica
Author: Betsy Cornwell
Published By: Clarion Books
Book: Stand Alone
Genre: Fairytale retelling
Found: Pre-order on amazon.co.uk
Rating: Highly Excited!
Nicolette’s awful stepsisters call her “Mechanica” to demean her, but the nickname fits: she learned to be an inventor at her mother’s knee. Her mom is gone now, though, and the Steps have turned her into a servant in her own home.
But on her sixteenth birthday, Nicolette discovers a secret workshop in the cellar and begins to dare to imagine a new life for herself. Could the mysterious books and tools hidden there—and the mechanical menagerie, led by a tiny metal horse named Jules—be the key to escaping her dreary existence? With a technological exposition and royal ball on the horizon, the timing might just be perfect for Nicolette to earn her freedom at last.
Gorgeous prose and themes of social justice and family shine in this richly imagined Cinderella retelling about an indomitable inventor who finds her prince . . . but realises she doesn’t want a fairy tale happy ending after all.
- Goodreads
Ok, so this actually came out on the 13th, but I don’t have it yet. Why not? Because apparently it takes forever and a day to arrive so I wont be getting it till mid September. Excuse me?!
But then it gives me an excuse to write this post, because if this isn’t a Waiting On book, I don’t know what is!!
I’m excited about this one and I think I need to calm down because if I build my hopes too far up they will be impossible for the book to live up to, but to me it sounds like a book along the same lines as Cinder by Marissa Meyer and that’s never a bad comparison.
It’s Cinderella with tech and while she herself is not part machine (so far as we know!) it sounds like she knows what she’s doing when it comes to a workshop. I’m a little apprehensive about that last line there though, because I’m partial to a HEA and while someone may not NEED a man to complete them, it’s pretty darn nice to have someone to share stuff with., which seems to be overlooked in stories, when a point is trying to be made. So no pressure there then!
I haven’t read anything else by this author but I hope to check out her other work. How fast I do though, obviously depends on how much I enjoy Mechanica. I can’t wait to see what flourishes Betsy has added to the well loved fairytale.
