A Cinderella retelling where I truly felt for Lady Tremaine.

It’s the same fairy tale but with more background. We see how Lady Tremaine and her daughters end up with Cinderella and her father. We get to know why Lady Tremaine and all of the others turned into the people they were in the actual fairy tale

I ended up liking Lady Tremaine and her daughters. I rooted for the Lady. At the same time, I rooted for Cinderella and her happy ending.

I just wish that this book captured my attention a bit more. Maybe it’s because I have read so many Cinderella retelling before this? Maybe I wanted even more of a twist? Even so, it was well written and fun for a Cinderella retelling.

True rating: 3.5/5

If it’s a retelling, I’m reading it - especially if it’s a villain’s origin! This made my heart so sad for Lady Tremaine!! Lord Richard was so horrible and the true villian and it was devastating to watch sweet, loving, happy Lady T become this twisted unrecognizable woman that lost herself and lost knowing love. Poor Drizella and Anastasia too! yes they were a bit spoiled, but they never deserved being mistreated like that and having to be witness to their mother’s destruction.

I would have liked to see Lady Tremaine be a bit more determined and head strong to have fought for herself and her daughters more. But I understand that given the time period of the story, women had no such power. And it was sad to see that her undesirable fate had only ending because of selfish and proud “fairy godmothers” who believed they could only do good when in fact we see the chaos they can also create. This made me hate godmothers lol.

Now this is one of the better retellings I've read. I was very engaged through the whole story. Very well done!

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what to rate this book but I think I settled on a 3.5. This was an odd mix for me. I flew through the book (before I knew it I was 75% done) so I was clearly enjoying it, but at the same time the plot felt so rushed. Lady Tremaine falls in love with and becomes engaged to a man in less than a week, move away to his home, and is then immediately abused for no reason (I'm still not sure why he acted the way he did). However, even despite all of that, I still found a disconnect from the Lady Tremaine in the story to the one that know from the movie. Serena Valentino usually weaves in scenes and/or dialogue from the movies to help tie everything together, but this time it felt like right when we were able to get to the movie the scene immediately cuts to right when the movie ends so we never really get to see those interactions. The whole thing just felt a little thrown together and more of a side story, rather than a back story. However, that being said, I did still enjoy most of it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Disney for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I have never really read re-telling a before Jenny Hickmans P.A.N. Series but I went into this with high hopes that it would take me away to my childhood love of Cinderella with another version of the fairytale.

I want to say I loved it but I just liked it. It was ok. It was easy to read. But I just felt it was basic. Hard actually to put in words. Just thought it never went deep into the re-telling or made me vested in the story.

I am however going to read another from the series in hopes that it was a one-off. I have heard some of the others were quite fabulous.

Thank you to the publisher for the gifted copy in return for an honest review!

Another excellent addition to this villains series. If you were a fan of Disney’s Cinderella III you will more likely love this tale. All stories have two sides and while everyone loves to hate a villain they often have their reasons for turning out the way they did. This title is full of people both “good” and “evil” making mistakes and in some cases asking for forgiveness. No spoilers here though! While this title isn’t necessarily to the first arc of the series, just like Cruella I think you will enjoy it just the same. We also get a little glimpse of the odd sisters and Circe once again!

I have a thing for fairy tales. I love jumping back into old stories and then seeing what people can do with them. I even took a course in University all about the re-tellings of famous stories. We call them "Intertexts". This one is a continuation of good ol' Cinderella. You've heard her story, you've watched the Disney movies (cartoon, sequels and live action remake) and I'm sure you've watched the Brandy version too. There's so many retellings of this story! A Cinderella Story has been redone so many times too. There are even organizations named after the story!

But... what about Lady Tremaine? The evil woman with the cat (that I want, by the way. I like cats. I don't care if they are the bad guys... They are fluffy) and the ugly step sisters (who weren't that ugly, honestly). Anastasia and Drizella... There is so much there for a story! So much! I am not surprised at all that Serena Valentino decided to add her spin to this story. Wicked step-mothers aren't always wicked... Maybe just not well informed.

We open up with a bit of a synopsis if you somehow did not know the basics of this story, and then get thrust into the Fairylands! Fairy God Mother gets a request from Cinderella, and it turns out she has to help her ward. The whole point Fairy God Mother brings up that villains deserve their bad endings... But do they? Do they? Look how many live action remakes we are getting with villains... It can't be true. Maybe they deserve a second chance...

This book is a roller coaster ride of fun. It gives a lot of life to Lady Tremaine and makes her story way more interesting than a brooding old bat who's just a jerk. Seeing this woman be hardened over time and what happened to her... It makes you understand the story a bit more (but obviously still feel bad because Cinderella didn't deserve all the hate).

Overall, great book! I recommend it if you love Disney retellings.

Four out of five stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Disney Publishing Worldwide for a free copy of this book in exchange of an honest review.

What a heartwrenching tale of love, loss, and deception! Twisted fairytales are the best. Valentino did a great job of using the classic Disney movie to weave this story, even going as far as using the same lines and scenes from the movie. Trigger warning: emotional abuse, abandonment. The only thing I didn't care for was how Valentino kept having her characters allude to other stories of hers ("that's another story"), and I hadn't read her before. It became daunting.

This wasn't my favorite of the Villian's series but it was a decent read. It was fun getting to focus on Lady Tremaine and I look forward to seeing what Valentino comes up with next. I have all of the Villian's books in hardcover so I'll be grabbing a copy of Cold Hearted to go along with my collection for sure!

DNF. This was just not that good. The writing felt like first draft, just getting ideas down.

*Thank you to the publisher for this eARC.

I'll be darned, Cruella did have a heart at one time. There was an understandable reason she did what she did but at some point she went off the deep end. The fairy godmother's story was a nice mix in too.

Lady Tremaine is perhaps my favourite Disney Villain.

Her calculated cruelty is such a stark contrast to the manic and melodramatic dispositions of other villains, like The Queen of Hearts and Captain Hook.

As such, I was looking forward to this expansion of Lady Tremaine's story.

But this is where Serena Valentino's latest entry into the Villains series went off the rails for me.

By the end of the book, Lady Tremaine devolves into the same sense of hysteria we see from the more one-dimensional villains. She completely loses her integrity, becoming a fanatical Margaret White type, and in the process losing any sense of appeal.

What's more, the strength that she conveyed throughout the novel is entirely forgotten to allow for a more dramatic ending.

Unfortunately, this inconsistency in character development, as well as the sub-par writing and erratic pacing, is something I've come to expect of this series.

I really do enjoy fairytale retellings, I especially enjoy this series that tells the story from the villains prospective. This book felt a little rushed to me. Everything happened so quickly and was wrapped up with a neat little bow. I did enjoy the story from Lady Tremaine's point of view, but I felt like this could have been tailored a little more. Everything seemed to happen within days. I understand what the author was trying to do but it just slightly missed the mark. ♡

This is an interesting retelling. I liked how Cinderella’s father’s character was expanded to explain the story and how Lady Tremaine became the wicked stepmother. It was also interesting to see Cinderella’s character she was still sweet and very innocent but also rude and even a bit of a bully to her new family. I liked how complicated the matter of who the villain of the story became while also staying true to the original tale and ultimately keeping Lady Tremaine’s villainous status. This is a cool series and I particularly enjoyed this installment.

The Villains series is fantastic for anyone looking for a unique view of the Disney villains and how they become the bad guys we know and love to hate. The villains backstories are fascinating and propel them from static, background characters to an integral part of a bigger tale. I’m especially intrigued by the way the series connects all the Disney princess stories together in one universe.

This YA book is a retelling of the Cinderella story from the perspective of Lady Tremaine. It's a very different angle on the well known tale - it takes the whole narrative and flips it on it's head. It raises some fun ideas and questions - what if Lady Tremaine wasn't always cold and heartless? What if she was a perfectly lovely lady who was a victim of circumstance? What if she fell head over heels for Cinderella's father, then found out that he was the real villian? What if years of his neglect and cruelty hardened her to the character we all love to hate? This book is part of the Disney Villians series, which are all fun retellings of beloved stories from new and unexpected angles. I really loved the premise of this book. I enjoyed the possibilities that it explored and how it illustrated some different dimensions to characters that have always been portrayed negatively. I didn't love the pacing in this book - in several places a nicely flowing narrative was suddenly cutoff by a jump several years into the future. Also some parts were a bit repetitive. As a Disney fan, I liked it well enough that I will definitely check out some other books in the series. I give it high mars for creativity. Thank you to Netgalley and to Disney Publishing Worldwide for providing me with a review copy of this book.

Thank you to Disney Hyperion and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Get hype, Disney fans! It’s time for the villains stories. In this installation by Serena Valentino, Cold Hearted follows the story of Lady Tremaine, and her daughters, Anastasia and Drizabella. It even gets to the origin of Lucifer the cat. You know Cinderella’s story, now see the other side.

I’ll admit, this one took me a while to get into. Not because I don’t like Cinderella or Lady Tremaine—on the contrary, I enjoy Cindy a lot and one of my uni friends is “friends with” Lady Tremaine at Disney. So I was pretty excited about this one! It was the first chapter or two that made me wonder what I got myself into.

Our story starts not with Lady Tremaine and her daughters, but with the fairy godmothers in charge of the Book of Fairy Tales. To me, this felt a little ridiculous. I wanted to plow into the story and see what was up! Once we do, and of course we do, it’s a really good story. It provides another side of Lady Tremaine. More sympathetic, perhaps than she deserves.

Or perhaps not.

Whichever side of the story you fall under, it’s a perfectly fun read! If you love Disney, retellings, or villains, I would definitely pick this one up! You won’t regret it.

3.5/5

The "Villain" series has taken the fairy tale stories we know and given them a back story that we don't. "Cold Hearted" focuses on Lady Tremaine, the Evil Stepmother in Cinderella's story. I've read a few in this series, but this one was probably my favorite. We don't actually know much about Lady Tremaine, or why she turned out the way that she did. I definitely think she was a sympathetic character, and hers was the perfect story to truly make the reader think about villians as more than just a foil to the main protagonist.

This book is a really interesting take on Lady Tremaine. As a villian, I feel like she usually doesn't get too much thought. Therefore, I found this take on her life to be a fun spin. Overall, I really enjoyed it. I thought the backstory was pretty clever and liked how things tied together. I also felt bad for her and kept wanting things to go differently, which indicated that the author was able to pull me in and create empathy for Lady Tremaine. My biggest complaint is that the book did feel a bit rushed at times and I would have liked more substance. However, I still thought it was really entertaining and enjoyable.

I have loved all the books in the Disney villain series that Serena Valentino has written. Cold Hearted is no exception. I highly recommend checking this one out!