Thief Liar Lady

I was very excited I got to read an e-arc of Thief, Liar, Lady by D.L. Soria, as she is one of my autobuy authors. Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley, but this hasn’t influenced this review.

This book had all the right ingredients: Cinderella turned upside down, a long con, court intrigue, magic, love and feels sneaking in, and PLOT TWISTS. Many amazing little plottwists that swift your entire view.

We start off with the classic fairytale story, where Cinderella is engaged to the prince of her dreams, when slowly we begin to understand how Cinderella and her scheming stepmother and stepsisters used a little magic and the power of suggestion to make the prince head over heels for Cinderella, feelings that are not exactly replicated by Cinderella herself, she’s in it for the bigger picture: making a better life for her and her family. And maybe some other factors play in. But she soon discovers that it might not be so easy to keep the prince interested, and to keep playing the docile damsel really wears on her feministic nerves.

Ok I have to say I love all the feminism! I’ve never read a book where it is so clearly shown when something’s off, when she’s dismissed basically because of her genitals and damsel status. She always calls it out in her head and that helped me so much to realise what the males are doing is basically wrong. Like dismissing her opinions with “just focus on the wedding and not boring politics”, or grabbing her arm all of a sudden. I know it’s really a little thing, but having read a lot on feminism but I never really get it when it happens in real life, this was so helpful to discover the misogyny in my own life. Ok this was longer than I wanted it to be, back to the story.

I really loved Ash as a character, she’s basically a con artist with a good heart underneath, which makes her so interesting! The plot is amazing and well thought out, and the pacing was perfect, never a dull moment. The characters had a lot of depth, and there were many themes beside feminism woven into the story. The use of magic was original, and while sometimes it wasn’t entirely clear to me what the rules were, it was very interesting and very limited, so there was no easy magic fix anywhere to be found.

The worldbuilding was good, it was a fairytale setting but with depth on the politics, so while we don’t see much outside the palace, it does feel like a rich world. Because of the young characters, romance plot and fairytale setting, it had the feel of a YA book, but that’s not a bad thing in my opinion. I love YA, and would love to see more YA fantasy tropes enveloped in adult fantasy, with the depth and maturity and darkness of adult fantasy added (and trust me, it is quite dark at times), and for me this book delivered exactly that. I did hope for some more diversity, as Destiny Soria is known for that in her books, but that wasn’t the case here.

All in all, I really liked this book, the almost ending wrecked me and I cried actual tears, so that’s a good sign: I really really cared about these characters (especially a certain hostage prince).