Everyone knew that Sophie Beckett was a bastard.
Within the lineage of all the books in the series about the Bridgerton family, this opening line remains the one that really smacks you hard across the face. In fact, there is absolutely nothing else that comes even closer to this commencement of festivities. The rest of the novels feature opening lines mostly of a romantic nature or, at least, that natural lead to romance. This line quoted above, on the other hand, well, what does it mean? Is this entry in the wildly popular series to take a different direction from the rather lighthearted look at the courses of true love? Of course not. Sophie Beckett may have parental difficulties, but so did Snow White, Rapunzel and Gretel. Not to mention that other put-upon fairy tale daughter. You know the one; she has step-family issues and defective footwear at the dance.
She had been reading Lady Whistledown's Society Papers since it had debuted in 1813, and the gossip columnist was almost always correct when it came to matters of the Marriage Mart. Not, of course, that Sophie had ever had the chance to see the Marriage Mart for herself. But if one read Whistledown often enough, one could almost feel a part of London Society without actually attending any balls. In fact, reading Whistledown was really Sophie's one true enjoyable pastime. She'd already read all of the novels in the library, and as neither Araminta, Rosamund, nor Posy was particularly enamored of reading, Sophie couldn't look forward to a new book entering the house.
Poor Sophie loves to read. Not that that a love of reading maker Sophie poor. No, that is all due to laws being legislated to support the aristocracy. It is those laws which have made Sophie and poor, but, ironically, also rich. Because reading is not just fundamental, it is also enriching. Since the library is a sanctuary from the taunts her the cruel trio of her stepfamily thanks to their willful adoption of ignorance, it is really two havens for the price of one. Not just a means of escaping stupidity, but pure clear lake of wit that is more than enough to slake her thirst. Wit will prove to an essential difference between those women who whose faces are hidden behind masks at balls who attract and those women whose faces are hidden by masks at balls who repel.
Sophie certainly didn't look like the woman he'd danced with two years earlier. Her hair was all wrong, and she was far too thin. He distinctly remembered the lush, curvy feel of the masked woman in his arms; in comparison, Sophie could only be called scrawny. He supposed their voices were a bit similar, but he had to admit to himself that as time passed, his memories of that night grew less vivid, and he could no longer recall his mystery woman's voice with perfect clarity. Besides, Sophie's accent, while exceptionally refined for a housemaid, was not as uppercrust as hers had been.
This tale of a Bridgerton boy’s romance is not exactly the most faithful version of Cinderella ever, but it is certainly a more sincere version than the plethora of ironic subversion which has been the staple of the fairy tale rewrite for the past few decades. Of course, the point is not subvert the conventions of the genre in this case, but merely to provide an accessible backdrop to another enjoyable exercise in historical romance. The usual stuff about the put-upon stepdaughter and the magic of the ball and chase after the mysterious beautiful damsel by the handsome prince (even if he’s not really a prince) are all intact, but after the clock strikes midnight things start to veer off the familiar track just a little. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. The one part about the story of Cinderella that usually gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop is that whole section where the prince searches for the foot that fits. And that is precisely the part of the story making up the bulk of this reinvention.
