A great book!

I enjoyed the characters and also the story overall, it was very different and absolutely not what I expected.

I actually ended up buying a copy of The Glass Dagger to support the author.

Thanks so much for allowing me to read this and I really hope to see more from this world!

The Glass Dagger, the first book in The Kingdom of Assassins Chronicles series, offers a fresh and captivating take on the fantasy genre. This unique retelling of Cinderella is both inventive and enchanting, setting itself apart with its blend of adventure and magic.

In this reimagining, Ella forsakes her life as a lady of the court to become an assassin, operating in the shadows to protect the castle and the royal family. Her iconic glass daggers, which she leaves behind as a mark of her presence, provide a brilliant nod to the classic fairytale while adding a thrilling new dimension.

The novel strikes a perfect balance between romance and plot, ensuring that the love story enhances rather than overshadows the main narrative. Additionally, the light touch of magic adds to the allure without overwhelming the fantasy elements.

Overall, The Glass Dagger is a delightful and engaging read that combines imaginative storytelling with a nod to its fairytale roots, making it a standout entry in adventure fantasy.

I will say that i love retelling story but i can be very specific about loving or not a retelling story.

This was a retelling unlike one I've read before and i was really surprise by the choice of the author!

Be ready to discover a dark fairytale adaptation with Cinderella being an trained assassin. This is really not your typical ,cozy retelling but one with combats, poisons,enchanted potions, and a really strong FMC.

Thank you to Kelsey Robinson,Robinson Sword & Pen Publishing and netgally for this ARC.

The concept sounded fascinating, and I was excited to read it, but try as I might, I could not get into the story once I was actually reading it. Something about it just felt flat, and I ended up having to DNF.

The first in the 'Kingdoms of Assassins' series, Glass dagger is a loose retelling of Cinderalla.

Baron's daughter Ella was sent away from court at eight years old for wanting to be a knight. However, instead of travelling to a neighbouring kingdom to learn to be a lady, she secretly joined her step-mother's band of assassins. Code name 'Cinderalla', Ella has now been instructed to resume her former identity and come back to court to protect Prince David.

Ella is a strange character, who is hard to like. She starts the book full of faith that, since she is protecting the crown, anything she does is acceptable. She tortures a man early on, and she is unpleasantly blase about causing pain and death. She is confident and respected in her world of assassins. However, outside of this environment she is quite a childish teenager who doesn't really interact convincingly with the people around her, and she is painfully slow to work out any of the plots that threaten the royal family.

Even for a fairy tale, this book seems incredibly naive about court life. There's a bizarre scene on the morning following Ella's return to court when she attends a breakfast buffet and doesn't know who to sit with. I appreciate that this is a YA book but not everything has to be presented through the lens of a school. Likewise with the continual sneaking out avoiding the one effective guard the palace seems to have.

This book also definitely needed a better editor. There are several uses of 'weary' when the writer clearly means 'wary' - the editor should have caught that. An editor would probably also have toned down phrases like 'Ella squealed in delight as the water engulfed her' when the character gets into a bath. It's also a little distracting that the author chooses to use the names of so many side-characters in Disney's Cinderella - we have Lucifer, Gus and Jaq as human characters, I think we're only missing Suzie and Perla. Strangely, despite the inclusion of the minor references, there is an important fairytale character that is omitted entirely. I assume we may see them in a future book of the series.

Glass dagger is a flawed book, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. However, the writing is fluent and the book itself is very readable. The little details of the magic system are fun, and the world-building is confident. The book ends on a cliff hanger and I will admit to being intrigued as to what the next book covers.

Thank you to the publishers for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving this ARC, and this doesn't influence my review. I loved the tropes in this book and enjoyed reading!

This was one of the weakest Cinderella retellings I've read. I enjoy reading fairy tale retellings, so I dove into this one with a lot of gusto. However, I stopped reading for a while after the first "torture" scene. It wasn't that it was graphic, but more like...there wasn't anything to it. It was so underwhelming for what was supposed to be, or what I thought, a set up of what Ella's character was like - efficient assassin. I stopped reading after that and picked it up again when I was looking for something to read on my cruise. It didn't get much better. A lot of what I expected from the plot summary just didn't meet expectations. I generally enjoy YA and I'm sorry this one wasn't for me.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

The Glass Dagger was absolutely not for me. From the brief summary, I thought it sounded like a fun, badass retelling of a classic fairy tale. It was not. The book is poorly written with major inconsistency issues, unnatural dialogue, and shallow, undeveloped characters. I honestly should have simply DNF-ed this book; however, I had a goal of finishing every book I started this year. This book had no idea what it wanted to be. The toruture scenes and details were so poorly written, they were almost laughable. Nothing in the book flowed. It appears that this is a first book in a series. I will absolutely not be reading any more of them.

thank you to netgalley for the advanced reading copy. I really enjoyed this and will be getting copies for my shop.

This was a dark Cinderella retelling and I was here for it! I loved the story line of this book and it was an entertaining read which I read quickly. Highly enjoyed this.
I just reviewed The Glass Dagger by Kelsey Robinson. #TheGlassDagger #NetGalley
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I’ve read a lot of retelling books this year and this one wasn’t too bad! I enjoyed it but I found it to be missing something.
This one is a slightly darker retelling of Cinderella where Ella has left her court to become an assassin. She is later assigned to protect her prince.
The author’s writing style was nice and easy to follow.
I just found the plot to be really slow and it just didn’t keep my attention unfortunately.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for an eARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Solid read I have to say. I like main character Ella. Childishly naive and learning truth hard way but true to herself and loyal to people she loves. Darkish story with dark but open ending, so I'm hoping for sequel.

This is probably my favorite Cinderella retelling. I love a stabby and sassy FMC that knows what she wants and is fiercely protective of the people she loves. I think Ella was such a good balance between protective and merciful. She’s a badass assassin and does whatever is needed to protect the crown, and her best friend. There’s some pretty good tension, but I also wish that there was more there between David and Ella. I think there were some good plot twists, some I saw coming and some were surprising. The world building was quite effective, I knew and understood the magic system without any problems. I look forward to reading more of this series in the future!

At the begining I wanted to thank NetGalley for providing me a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion…

.. and I have to say, I liked it! It was kind of chaotic at the begining (those sprayed mirrors were clever!), but I enjoyed every page of this book. It supposed to be Cinderella retelling, and when you look at FMC’s name - Ella, it cannot be more obvious 😅

It supposed to be retelling but it’s not. I mean, you will find every element of this fairytale in this book, but it is not classic Cinderella story, because here its Prince Charming who is damsel in distress, and Cinderella plays a role of protector - deadly assassin, who will do anything in her power to keep him safe.

If you like fantasy retellings of classical tales, this book will defenetly be perfect for you 🥰

4/5⭐️

The Glass Dagger by Kelsey Robinson offers a dark and engaging Cinderella retelling with a twist, featuring a strong female assassin, Ella. The plot unfolds with a mix of fantasy elements, intricate world-building, and a well-thought-out magic system. While I found some moments predictable, and the characters immature, I still liked the book for its intriguing story, character development, and the promise of a series. Fans of dark fantasy, assassins, and fairy tale reimaginings will find this book an enjoyable read.

A great spin on a classic fairytale. The glass dagger had a strong lead where your average Cinderella was quiet and held back. loved the writing style too!

This book had everything I love! Mostly. It had strong FMC who have been through so much to get through where they are now, royals, fairy tale re-imagining, assassins, enchanted potions, poisons and so so much mysterious events in the past.

It is a dark Cinderella retelling (please check trigger warnings) full of twists and turns that will have you staying up till 3am just to see what happens next! I literally finished it in two days!

I just loved the development of each character and the complex web of secrets that was slowly revealed! Also the magic system was really well thought out and I loved learning more about it. The world was beautifully written and the combat scenes were perfect! Also it has a bit of torture and the FMC trying to hide it from the person she is trying to protect and I LOVE it when they finally found out and say who did this to you! Although because of that ending it was spoiled a bit... but I am still very shocked from everything that happened and NEED the next book!

Each character was fleshed out so well! And I really loved reading about them but need more information about everything! The characters deal with grief and trauma as well as mental health issues and I thought they were all incorporated really well into the story and cannot wait to see how the author writes the conflict that I know is coming.

I really enjoyed this one and definitely recommend it for those dark fantasy lovers who are in it for the plot, secrets and characters with a side of slow burn romance, assassins and magic enchantments.


Thank you to Netgalley for the copy, this did not impact my review.

You only have to check what I've read the past weekend and you notice that I love fairytale retellings. And although the Frog Prince will always be "my" tale, I think Cinderella is my very first fairytale love. When I saw this book on Netgalley I was therefore incredibly curious. Cinderella is usually a tale with a kind and soft female lead. In this case she would be a trained assassin. I was therefore both excited and nervous when I started this arc this weekend.

I have to admit that I really had to get used to the tone of this fairytale retelling. I've been reading too many cozy ones lately and this one is a lot, but cozy is for sure not one of them. This book comes with quite some trigger warnings and please take them serious. But despite the fact that this retelling doesn't have the usual fairytale tone I grew more and more invested in this story and more and more attached to the characters the more I read.

Because this author is not simply writing a fairytale retelling. She's actually writing a political epic fantasy with fairytale elements. I'm already looking forward to the other books in this world. Not only because the story is far from finished, this book doesn't come with a happily ever after (yet), but also because I'm really excited to see all Ella's sisters getting their own stories. I'm counting on Snow White and the Little Mermaid and some more surprises!

Despite the fact that this is not a typical retelling, all the elements of the original tale are present and the author did a clever job when it comes to naming characters. And although this Cinderella is not a typical Cinderella I did feel my heart breaking at the end when she discovered what has been going on around her. All she wanted was to protect the one person she can't live without. All she got was betrayal and pain.

If you wanna read a fairytale that's not mostly sweet and magical you should really give this book a try! You won't be disappointed.

First, thank you to Netgalley and Kelsey Robinson for an ARC copy of this book!!

The Glass Dagger is a Cinderella retelling where the main character Ella turns her back on being a lady of the court in order to become an assassin who protects the castle and the royal family from the shadows. Her glass daggers she leaves behind on her marks are an incredible callback to the original fairytale.

This story has just the right touch of romance without letting it overshadow the plot. There's also a fun touch of magic in play without this being too heavy on the fantasy side.

I love that this is just the first book in the series. I cant wait to see how Ella and David's story plays out (especially as she tells him the truth) and I'd love to see some of the side characters explored more, I need to know more about Drea, Raven, Henry, and Luca!

Absolutely a must read for fans of fairytale retellings, strong FMCs, found family, and lovers of plot twists because this book has a big one that I did not see coming at all!

I want to say thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

I did end up DNFing it at about 50% in unfortunately the story was not grasping my attention. The synopsis of the book sounded like it would make a fantastic story but it just read a little young and fell flat for me. Our FMC is supposed to be a trained assassin and serious to the point and while during her "fights" she does come out victorious it just feels like it is a little too easy it lacks the thrill and action one expects from a fight. That mixed with her return to a childhood home and she all of a sudden becomes just a girl trying to reclaim old habits from being 8 rather than taking in her surroundings in her new role and acknowledging that things had changed in 9 years almost like a grown child in denial and nothing like a mature young adult who has been trained in battle and stealth. This book probably has an audience type that will love it for a quick read but it just wasn't for me.