Cinder & Ella | Happily Ever After by Kelly Oram
While surfing the Kindle app for some free book to read, late at night, I found Cinder & Ella by Kelly Oram. I’ve always enjoyed every version I’ve read/seen of Cinderella and this one certainly caught my eye. Ella Rodriguez is the main character – a girl obsessed with books. That’s what initially caught my interest! A fellow reader in a book as another version of Cinderella…. my kind of story! The greater (or funnier) thing is that she is obsessed with a book with the characters named Cinder and Ella (who she was named after, I think). She writes a book review blog (like I do!) and is quite popular. During her time having the book review blog, she meets and crushes on a guy online who goes by Cinder. She has no clue who the guy is or where he is located, but there is some serious crushing going on both ends.
The book starts off with Ella going on her normal, every day life – showing that she talked to Cinder, had the blog, was a huge reader, loved her mom and had a pretty normal life. That is, until her birthday. That’s the day that changes everything. Ella and her mom get into a crash; Ella doesn’t remember much but it resulted in disfiguring her body and leaving her handicapped, and her mother dead. Now with her handicap, her mother dead and her new life with the dad that left her at a young age for her step-mom and two daughters, Ella has to learn how to manage this new life.
Initially, during the first several months after the accident, Ella doesn’t have her computer and avoids going back to her online life. During this time, famous actor Brian Oliver is in the middle of giving the very same book Ella is obsessed with, life as a movie. His online crush has gone missing and he is miserable – he believes that she has died and is grieving. In the midst of it all, to help promote the movie, he is forced to pretend to have a relationship with his co-star that he really can’t stand. That is until he surprisingly gets a message from the online girl, Ella.
The second book, Happily Ever After, follows Ella and Brian as the last book ended – Ella and Brian meeting for the first time in person. It happened quite oddly and quite surprisingly, and that is when their relationship is truly tested. With Brian in the spotlight as an actor, and Ella feeling insecure about her handicap – the constantly under the spotlight relationship takes a toll on them and it’s a true test to see if they can make this work after all these years.
This series was actually really great. The initial subject that interested me was the book loving Ella, and after just a chapter or two, I was hooked. Kelly Oram did an excellent job writing this book and I give both her books, a big whopping 5 stars! I was captivated rather quickly and was super happy to find the sequel available! She put an amazing spin on Cinderella, and I loved that she made the Prince into a famous actor that is well known to use women. It put a crazy twist on the classic. That and Ella’s character in it’s entirety! Book lover, insecure, handicap, loss of mother, absentee father now in the picture, complete change of lifestyle and everything! It made the story more real, and realistic. Love love love it.
The Ranting Raven Rae 