Pretty Deadly Blog Tour + Review

Welcome to the book tour for the highly anticipated novel by Kelsey Josund, Pretty Deadly! Read on for my full review!

Pretty Deadly

Publication Date: October 26th, 2021

Genre: Dark Fantasy/ Fairytale Retelling (Not YA)

Publisher: Darkstroke Books

Cinna would quite literally kill for the throne.

She’s spent years forced to serve her wealthy cousins rather than attend society events alongside them, waiting for the chance to prove herself and exact revenge. When a ball is announced at the castle, promising to bring many powerful people to town, she seizes the opportunity to strike.

She bets her best friend, a small-time thief and con-man, that she can land a greater score the night of the ball than he can. They embark on parallel heists. But as their plots unfold, things begin to unravel: by the end of the night, the castle’s on lock down, a duchess is dead, a mansion has burnt to the ground, and Cinna hasn’t stolen anything. Or has she stolen something more valuable than gold and jewels?

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Cinna knows what she deserves. Her cousins have spent years trying to get her to forget it, but she has held onto the hope that her life will not be this way forever. Now, Cinna has a plan. On the night of the ball, her entire life will change. She’s so confident that she bets her best friend Johann that she will land a greater score than he will that night, and he has a large scheme of his own. This retelling of Cinderella stars a strong main female character and two grand heists that take place on the most magical night of the year, the night of the ball.

The pacing of this book is both slow and fast. Yeah, that sounds like a contradiction. The time from the heist to the ball is a short period of time, probably a few days to a couple of short weeks. I couldn’t really keep track as I was reading. Nevertheless, it felt like AGES before we got to the ball part of the book. Almost every detail of both heists was carefully laid out and analyzed as both Cinna and Johann have plans to change their lives that night. If you are into heist novels, this is definitely the book for you. It goes so in-depth to every aspect of the plan that I felt like I was at the drawing board with the characters.

Johann was definitely my favorite character of this book. He secretly admires and has feelings for Cinna and he hopes that if this plot goes well that he will be able to help her escape her horrid cousins. But this plan has to go perfectly for him to get enough money to do so. His parts of the book were definitely more fun for me to read as his plot seemed a little less sinister and mostly focused on the fun parts of sneaking around the castle/town. I would have read an entire book about his interesting life as a con man before he met Cinna.

Cinna was a character who I came into the book hoping to like. I knew she wasn’t supposed to be your typical sweet, innocent, submissive Cinderella. She had thoughts of her own, plans of her own, and wasn’t going to let her horrible “family” ruin her life any longer. Nevertheless, I didn’t love how many innocent people she drags down with her plot. I knew that she wanted revenge against her cousins, but the end result of her plan (which isn’t revealed until the end of the book) just didn’t feel…right to me. I didn’t fully understand her motive for that goal, and I didn’t think that what she gained was worth those she hurt along the way to get there. This is really what bumped the book from 5 stars to 3 stars for me. If you don’t come into the book expecting to like Cinna, you are going to enjoy this story FAR more. Come to this book for the heist shenanigans and the action-packed story, not necessarily for Cinderella.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a dark fairy tale retelling.

I received a copy of this book and this is my voluntary review.

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 books.

Excerpt

How interesting, Cinna thought. She had spent so many hours bent over a stove in the kitchen or crouched before the hearth, stoking flames carefully that refused to light. But she had prepared: this house was waiting tinder, ready to be consumed.

She couldn’t hear the screams over the roar of the flames, but surely they were there. Strangely, she didn’t feel cheated to have not heard their voices. It was fine that they died in silence.

It did not take long for the neighbors to begin streaming out of their own houses, and she did hear their screams. They swarmed around the flames, politely mute once they realized they could not do anything, full of awe before the enormity of the fire. Cinna blended into the crowd, nearly invisible in her costume.

At last, just as she had always pledged she would, she watched the house fall in on itself.

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About the Author

I am a software engineer and author living and working in Silicon Valley, California. I studied computer science at Stanford University, but I’ve always loved stories in all their forms. I approach writing fiction the same way I approach writing code: I like to know where it’s going, but I want to figure out the details as I go along. Good software is a lot like a good story, full of neat and clever solutions to tricky problems, beautiful at a granular level but also from a distance.

Originally from Seattle, I love getting outdoors and living in places that allow me to escape to the mountains on the weekends, and I care deeply about the ecosystems that humans impact and that impact us. My writing explores these issues while also following classic coming-of-age arcs in science fiction and fantasy. I’m also very interested in stories and characters that complicate the traditional and familiar, leading me to fairytale retellings from unexpected angles.

Kelsey Josund | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads

Book Tour Schedule

November 8^th

Reads & Reels (Spotlight) http://readsandreels.com

@inkspit.blog (Review) https://www.instagram.com/inkspit.blog/

Jessica Belmont (Review) https://jessicabelmont.com/

MacroMicroCosm Blog (Review) https://www.vraeydamedia.ca/macromicrocosm-online

Rambling Mads (Review) http://ramblingmads.com

November 9^th

@amysbooknook8 (Review) https://www.instagram.com/amysbooknook8/

@atrailofpages (Review) https://www.instagram.com/atrailofpages/

Series Book Lover (Review) https://seriesbooklover.wordpress.com/