The Cinderella Project

I've been wanting to read this book for a while and decided Valentine's week would be the perfect time to do it! As you'll notice, The Cinderella Project by Stan Crowe is written by a man. 

Nick Cairn is working on his doctorate and had three months to finish it. "The stated goal was to understand why supposedly 'perfect love' could go tragically wrong. I wanted to know if there were obvious warning signs on the entrance ramp to the freeway of romance screaming, 'Caution: dead end ahead!' The official literature always gave the usual, unsatisfying answers. I just knew there had to be something more, something deeper." (p. 2)

Moiré De Lanthe shows up in his lab one day and claims to be his new undergraduate assistant. He hasn't had an assistant in 13 months and tries to get rid of her but ends up agreeing to let her help. He's nervous because he's engaged to Ella and feels uneasy that he was so attracted to Moiré.

Ella is beautiful and Nick feels lucky to be engaged to her and is resolved to keep his promise to marry her and stay loyal to her. Ella has a stepmother and stepsister that Nick has never met because she won't allow it to happen. She needs constant reassurances of his love for her and gets him to agree to move the wedding from December to October, which he's not happy about since that's when he's scheduled to defend his dissertation, but agrees because he wants to prove he's committed to her. 

As the story goes on, Ella throws up more and more red flags and you wonder why Nick puts up with it. His parents are still married but their marriage is rocky and he's determined that his marriage will be different and he will keep his promise to Ella to marry her.

He enjoys spending time with Moiré but pushes her away because he doesn't want his conflicted feelings to interfere with his commitment to Ella. 

I enjoyed reading the male perspective in a romance and liked the conversations on love that Nick had with different characters--his parents, Ella and Moiré. This was a fun, clean read and I recommend giving it a chance.

You can visit the author's blog and sample the first chapter for free and he has some other posts where he talks about the development of the three main characters. You can find all that info here.

My Rating: 4 stars