Ember is a retelling of the Cinderella fairytale with Cinderella, renamed Ember, as a witch and with Prince Charming living under a curse that makes everyone adore him. Every aspect of the classic story has been twisted and reinvented. Ember is the exact opposite of the Disney-fied Cinderella that we have all come to imagine. She’s hard, cruel, and unrepentant, though she acknowledges her shortcomings and fully owns them. The stepmother and stepsisters are not the cruel harridans that we’ve come to expect, and there are no woodland creatures in sweet little caps singing songs. If there had been any, Ember would have gutted them for her spells.

This story was a delight to read. The dark twists Sharpe gives this fairytale reinvigorates the oft-told tale and gives it edge before unimagined by any retelling that I’ve seen. Ember is a strong, engaging character. She’s proactive and does not get things handed to her by a fairy godmother. She is her own fairy godmother. The Prince is an intriguing character as well, not just a means to happily ever after. His struggles and abuse of his curse make him believably human. Their courtship is not smooth and the pitfalls are nicely handled.

The only qualms I have with the story is that it is too short, and the central deception goes on too long for believability. Sharpe creates an intriguing world that could have been explored a little more through Ember’s growth into the witch she becomes, and though it is told in the first person by Ember, seeing Prince Adrian’s struggles with his curse would have been interesting, which could have possibly been accomplished through his journal that we get a brief peek at. I guess the fact that I finished wanting more is a compliment to the author rather than a problem with the story.

Sharpe warns that only readers 18 and older should read the story, but the sex is not too graphic or pervasive. What’s there suits the story well, though Ember and Adrian do go at it like rabbits. A sequel is planned, and I will happily read it.

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This is going to be a short review, because my fellow editors have said pretty much all there needs to be said about Ember.

Ember is brilliant. It’s a well written, wonderfully imagined, quirky retelling of the classic Cinderella story.

It’s also [more . . .]

Ember is a twisted, dark-edged story; a fairy tale as it should be, with all the gory bits left in.

I raced through the story, read it all in one sitting. It’s short and engaging, and written in a conversational first-person that draws the reader right in. And—let’s be honest—any story [more . . .]

Let me say it as simply as I can:  I loved Ember.

I loved that instead of the Disnified empty cardboard characters, the author has filled them out so that they are people—people that readers can identify with, people that readers can love.

[more . . .]

Fairytales were never my kind of story, which is probably why I grinned when I read the premise for Ember. Cinderella wicked? Looks like Disney better go do a remake for one of their classics.

Bettie Sharpe has a brilliant story on her hands about a witch absolutely entranced by Prince [more . . .]

While postmodern takes on fairy tales aren’t usually my thing, I was impressed by the clean prose, dry wit and well-realized characters in this retelling of Cinderella. Several days after reading it, I was struck by how revealing it is of contemporary culture: our fixations on irony and anger, our need to remake everything or deconstruct it, our struggle to [more . . .]

Ember is probably one of the best fairy tale remakes I’ve seen so far. It offers a human side to characters who were previously only flat stereotypes, and it cleverly plays these stereotypes as the rumors and gossip of other people.

The story of the Cinder Girl is just as brilliant [more . . .]