Title: Cursed – Enchanting Tales
Author: Felicity Harper
Rating: 7/10
Retelling of: The Frog Princess
The Twist: Though still including fantasy elements, the book is set in a Regency world, giving it a distinctly Jane Austen feel, almost like a crossover. Also, the frog princess is prince cursed into an ogre, not a frog.
I was going to review a different book today, but alas, I ran out of time to read it. So there’s been a slight change of plans. Instead I’d like to review a lovely little novella I stumbled across on Amazon just a week or two ago.
Cursed is the first in a series of fairy tale retellings by Felicity Harper, who has set all of her stories in a Regency-style setting with a bit of magic sprinkled in. Her author bio says she’s a “huge fan of Miss Austen and all things Regency,” and it really shows. Cursed is a quaint mix of Jane Austen and fairy tales that almost feels like a crossover, and makes for a charming coffee-break sort of read.
The General Overview
Cursed is the story of a girl, Henrietta Pemberly, who happens to meet an ogre in the woods near her home. Distinctly Austenian romantic adventures soon follow. It’s a shorter novella, but it manages to pack in a full story in a small space, and what it lacks in character depth it makes up for in its interesting setting and use of the fairy tale Harper is trying to retell.
Harper’s writing style is very tongue-in-cheek and playful, and she certainly likes her fluff over more steamy romances. There is a kiss, and a joke that the kissing gets to be a little too much, but nothing graphic and nothing swooningly romantic. I happen to appreciate both fluff and steam, so that was all right by me.
She’s delightfully humorous, especially in writing the interactions between sisters, and in some lighter scenes between the ogre and Henrietta. I don’t know that I would call it British humor broadly, but there is a certain Jane Austen/Downton Abbey/fluffy-British-romance sort of vibe to the jokes and asides that is refreshing. I found myself often smiling and felt at home among the forest walks and teas and small-town ballrooms, chuckling occasionally at well-timed comments and humor.
I also think Harper is kind of innovative, particularly with the Regency slant. I don’t think I’ve seen a Regency-set fairy tale before, which is really disappointing because, much like Harper, I happen to really enjoy the Regency era and Jane Austen. An Austenian world would be perfect for a light and fluffy fairy tale, and Harper aims to give us just that. She also presents us with a retelling of a story most probably haven’t heard of before, which is also refreshing.
Cursed is told from the point of view of Lady Henrietta Pemberly, the eldest of four sisters living with their father at their estate, Riverly. The second eldest is technically married, but she spends so much time at her childhood home even Henrietta wonders if she ever moved out. The sisters spend their time trying to attend balls and meet handsome gentlemen — or at least the younger ones do. Henrietta would much rather keep to her fairy stories and take walks in the forest with her head in the clouds.
It’s during these forest excursions that she encounters an ogre. He’s gruff and doesn’t want to talk much, but it’s clear he cares for Henrietta in the little snippets we get from his point of view. At first their interactions with one another are simply her leaving food in the woods for him, not knowing quite what he is, and him trying not to appear grateful.
Things change, however, when the second eldest (and married) sister, Prudence, decides that Henrietta must find a husband so that her sisters will stop making hussies of themselves by flirting while their eldest sister is still single. Prudence and Lord Pemberly think it would be a great idea to create a tournament, with knights and jousting and tests and things, to appeal to Henrietta’s romantic side. It does, sort of, but Henrietta is deeply embarrassed by their attempts to force her into picking a husband. Nevertheless, she goes along with it.
Men gather and fight in the tourney, and a handsome man named Sir Roderick Hardwick emerges as a strong contender for Henrietta’s hand. He’s charming enough, but something’s off about him, and we don’t find out what until the next day. Henrietta and her sisters fire arrows into the forest and the tournament contestants race to find and retrieve these arrows. Henrietta’s arrow ends up…in the ogre. Hardwick is ready to drag the ogre and the arrow back as a prize, but the estate manager saves him, and later gets Henrietta to help him care for the ogre’s wounds, not letting her know it was her arrow that felled him.
Love blossoms slowly, in true Austen style, and it seems like it blossoms in two directions. Henrietta warms up to Hardwick, but she also clearly likes the ogre. However he refuses to admit any feelings on his part. Instead, in secret, he helps Hardwick win the rest of the challenges, thinking that Hardwick will be better for Henrietta. But the ogre isn’t all he seems either.
You see, the ogre was originally a prince, cursed into this form for ill deeds in his past. He tries to atone, but the curse can’t be undone. The more Henrietta tries to push closer, the more he pulls away, until finally, after a heated argument, he leaves. Henrietta must make a choice. Marry the charming Hardwick, whom she can’t quite seem to trust, or find her beloved ogre, whom no one but herself will ever accept.
The Original Story Factor
Normally I wouldn’t lay out the plot of a book like that, but in this case I kind of had to. Mostly because this is a retelling of a little known story called “The Frog Princess” or “The Princess Frog,” and the elements that connect the two aren’t as recognizable as Snow White would be.
“The Princess Frog” is not a genderbent story of the Frog Prince/Frog King story we generally know. The story of the Princess Frog is a Russian story collected by Alexander Afanasyev about three princes who shoot arrows into a far distance, and who marry the women that bring the arrows back. The youngest prince’s arrow is brought back by a frog, who he has to marry.
Their father, the king, then decides to give the wives three tests, which the elder wives fail three times. The princess frog, however, sheds her skin at night and calls to magical handmaidens and wins all the challenges. But after the third test, the youngest prince burns her frogskin and she’s forced to leave him. He then sets out to find her in a “Cupid and Psyche” sort of journey, and eventually reunites with her.
So in terms of the presence of the arrow, the challenges, and the leaving, I have to give credit where credit is due. In the absence of a recognizable motif, in this case it would be a frog princess, the similarity of the plots does mark it as a retelling of this particular fairy tale.
However there were no frogs, and the enchanted person was a prince, not a princess. A very gruff prince who had been cursed because of the sins of his past.
That sounds more like a Beauty and the Beast retelling to me.
And Cursed did feel more like a Beauty and the Beast retelling. If it weren’t for the arrow retrieval, and the fact that the summary itself advertised it as a retelling of “The Frog Princess,” I would have assumed that was the sort of retelling this book was. I think because it left out at least one of two crucial elements — either an enchanted woman instead of a man, or the presence of a frog instead of an ogre — it simply didn’t succeed entirely as a recognizable retelling of this particular fairy tale.
But I did see the connections, so it wasn’t a total loss. In fact I was rather impressed by the efforts to make the connections, especially with a Regency slant, and a genderbent one as well. With the Ogre and Hardwick doing all the challenges instead of princessy wives, and Henrietta as an arrow-firing “prince” figure of sorts, it is a justifiable genderbending of the Princess Frog fairy tale.
It does, however, get a little confusing considering there’s already a famous Frog Prince tale out there, and that fairy tale doesn’t match this at all. However, because it is such a singular sort of fairy tale, I’m putting it under the Frog Prince tag (and handy graphic on the Reviews page) simply because of the frog motif. Even if it went unused.
The Criticism
While I did think Cursed was a charming little retelling, I also thought it was a little too…short. It’s listed under Amazon’s “Short Reads” category, and it is a novella length story, but I still felt that the pacing got a little rushed in places. Particularly in the end, things just started to spiral faster. The concluding details spun by so fast I actually had to reread the last bit to make sure I wasn’t missing any details. Several conversations between Henrietta and the ogre seemed to end without warning as well and could have benefitted from small transitionary sections.
I thought the move to retell fairy tales in an Austen-style Regency setting was intriguing, but I didn’t have high hopes. I think it was more the vibe of the Amazon Short Reads list that made me think it wouldn’t be good, not necessarily the idea itself. It ended up being really cool! But while Harper did an excellent job of bringing me into that Regency world (which had no name, collectively…was it England? Something made up? There was Riverly but I got the feeling that was just the Pemberly estate…), it was almost too Jane Austen at times.
A family of sisters with a doting but sometimes unhelpful father, where one of the sisters is just a little too independent and the younger sisters too flighty sounds a lot like Pride and Prejudice. Especially when you introduce a gruff male lead who seems to want nothing to do with the independent female lead, only to love and aid her later, and a charming young man who turns out to be not all that good after all. I really did feel like I was seeing Elizabeth Bennet and George Wickham in some scenes.
The distinctly Austen names didn’t help either. Pemberly is, of course, a nod to Mr. Darcy’s estate Pemberley. Hardwick definitely feels like a nod to Wickham. There was even a somewhat significant woman named Caroline, though she wasn’t as snooty as Caroline Bingley. I appreciate a nod to Jane Austen, but I think in this case it started to be a little too much.
The integration of magic into this Regency world was also a little scattered. There was an ogre cursed by gypsies, but little else in the way of magic, and I sometimes felt as though the characters themselves didn’t believe in magic. From the way they talked about Henrietta’s love of romantic stories, magic just didn’t feel natural to the world. Perhaps part of that was simply because I felt we were still in a Jane Austen novel, where things are a little more realistic.
I think, altogether, maybe one or the other should have been used. Either a Regency setting or a fantasy setting. I would have loved to see a simple Regency retelling without the magic, and a story as little known as “The Princess Frog” could have done really well in a more traditional fantasy setting.
However I also think that Harper has room to grow with the magical Regency she has. I’ll simply have to read the rest of her books to see what she does with the world.
Final Thoughts
I really did enjoy Cursed, all criticisms aside. It was refreshing to see a fairy tale that wasn’t often used retold in such an interesting way. And for being a sort of “coffee break read,” which is to say short and sweet and designed for a momentary diversion, it was perfectly charming and fluffy.
Harper has several other novellas set in the same Regency fantasy world, and I’m curious to see if the world is expanded in them. A quick glance at the rest of the series shows some generic fairy tales, but I’m still interested to see them in a Regency slant. I’ll probably download and read the others in her series for a bit of fun and light reading on breaks at work, simply because I have to know — does a Regency Cinderella still lose her shoe at a ball? What’s the Regency version of a Sleeping Beauty?
But all in all, Cursed was a surprisingly delightful romp through a world where fairy tales meets Jane Austen. It often had me smiling and was effortlessly entertaining. While it doesn’t hold up much to a deeply critical review, I do think that it’s just charming enough, and definitely interesting enough, to rank fairly in my list of enjoyable retellings.