The Charmed Wife: 'Does for fairy tales what Bridgerton has done for Regency England' (Mail on Sunday)

by Olga Grushin

*An Oprah Magazine Most Anticipated Book of 2021*
*A Woman & Home Top Four Literary Read*
*A lovereading.co.uk Star Book*

And they lived happily ever after . . . didn't they?

Cinderella married the man of her dreams - the perfect ending she deserved after diligently following all the fairy-tale rules. Yet now, two children and thirteen-and-a-half years later, things have gone badly wrong.

One night, she sneaks out of the palace to get help from the Witch who, for a price, offers love potions to disgruntled housewives. But as the old hag flings the last ingredients into the cauldron, Cinderella doesn't ask for a love spell to win back her Prince Charming.

Instead, she wants him dead.

Endlessly surprising and wildly inventive, The Charmed Wife is a sophisticated literary fairy tale for the twenty-first century that weaves together time and place, fantasy and reality, to conjure a world unlike any other. Nothing in it is quite what it seems, and the twists and turns of its magical, dark, swiftly shifting paths take us deep into the heart of romance, marriage and the very nature of storytelling.

'Dark and dreamy. Inside the plot, magic comes and goes. But inside the reader, it's all magic - all of us happily caught in Grushin's hypnotic spell.' - Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and The Jane Austen Book Club

'Fall under its charms, I dare you' - Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked

A powerful, provocative and quite wonderful modern literary fairy tale. I danced through the deep dark magic of The Charmed Wife - long live the fairy tale that lives beyond "happily ever after".' - lovereading.co.uk

'Surprising, darkly comedic and enchanting' - CNN

'Genre-bending and darkly comic, Grushin's fourth novel is a weird and wonderful triumph.' - Oprah Magazine

• ISBN10: 1529346371
• ISBN13: 9781529346374
• Publish Date: 21 January 2021 (first published 12 January 2021)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Hodder & Stoughton
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 288
• Language: English

Reviews

[mrs_mander_reads]

Three stars here because I can't do half stars and this is somewhere between three and four for me.
Someone else reviewed the book and said, "This book is not what you think it is." And honestly, that's the best description for this book. It's subversive of the princess stereotype, which I like, but it also explores family dynamics, how perception shapes them, mental illness/instability, and some substance abuse.
It took my awhile to read - not because the story isn't interesting, but I just wasn't motivated to finish it as much as I was to start. I'm thinking that I'm not the right reader for the book.
Possibly recommend to people who enjoy touches of magical realism that touch on sensitive topics.