Confessions Of An Ugly Stepsister was published in 2008. The writer, Gregory Maguire is famous for writing the "real" stories of fairytales. His other books include Wicked, Son of a Witch and Mirror Mirror. This book is supposed to be the real story of Cinderella.

My copy of this book is a hardback. The cover is black and orange and very fairytale-like. The edges of the pages are orange. I love the look of the book as it looks very magical and is eye-catching.

As with Gregory Maguire's other books, this story does follow the general plot of the fairytale it is based on. It is a thought provoking book and it gives the fairytale many more layers. The evil characters in the fairytales are not always necessarily evil. They can be misunderstood, or perhaps the good character is really the evil one. For this reason, it is possible to read Maguire's books with a completely open mind and not know what is going to come.

The story is told from Iris's point of view. Iris and her sister (Ruth) move to Haarlem with their mother Margarethe. Iris and Ruth are very plain girls according to their mother (ugly stepsisters?). They soon meet the beautiful Clara (Cinderella) and the story develops.

The way this book is written makes it very easy to read. At 416 pages, some people may think the book is long. I read it in only a few days as I found it hard to put down. I loved finding out what happened in comparison to what happened in the fairytale and longed to find out how it ended.