Ella Enchanted is very much a children’s story. It is written for girls around the age of 12 as another Cinderella story. It is rather inventive with the Cinderella story as far as back story, the spells, the fairy godmothers, the other races. I enjoyed the Ogres and the Elves the best, with their magic speech and ability to see the real you respectively.

The story is told in first person past, with a few time jumps forward and then back to where we are. There are a few times that we are told something before it happens, and then we step back to where we were in order to get there. I didn’t like this much as it ruined some of the suspense.

It was a quick read, 232 pages read in a matter of maybe three hours, so it was a nice light reading in between all my school work. The story itself seems to be lacking an overall story arch for why we are reading this now. It seems like there are events that are on the time line, and they all come back through over and over again, like Prince Char, and the stepsisters, but the only real overarching plot is to get the curse broken, and that seems to die away at points as well, when Ella goes along with it for six months at a time. I think part of the problem is that Lucinda was resolved too quickly. This is fixed in the movie, so that all the tension builds up to the end instead it dying little by little over the course of the book.

I can see why they changed the movie so much, mostly because the book does not really have a “bad guy.” The sisters are mean, and selfish, but they are not evil, and do not really count as bad guys. The worst thing, is the possible bad guy in the future that could possibly use her against Char, but the fear is intangible, because we do not see this potential bad guy. This is one of the main things that I feel made the movie a stronger story, because it had one journey not many, and it had few plot points, that were more focused, and all the of the tension built up in the possible killing of Char.

I did like that the book talked about what happens when she attempts to disobey. In the movie she does it without any show of a fight, and in the book we can see the struggle she goes through.

Overall I give this book a 2.5-3 – it was entertaining, but not amazing.