Book Review: "Cold Hearted" gives heartbreaking origins an utterly heartless ending

I am a sucker for a good villain origin story. Bonus points if it somehow explains how this character isn’t actually as villainous as we thought and is in fact someone worthy of our empathy. Because evil for evil’s sake isn’t always as fun as people think it is, especially when that character is the focus of the story. 

This is why I was so excited to dive into Cold Hearted. The character of Cinderella’s Stepmother is one we’ve seen time and time again, portrayed with various shades of understanding at least, if not empathy. We may not agree with the choices she makes, or the way she treats our heroine, but in reading between the lines, we can somewhat see her point of view.

Disney’s 1950 animated film Cinderella doesn’t extend this kind of empathy towards Lady Tremaine, but then to be fair that wasn’t the expectation of the time period, and that also wasn’t the focus of the film. But that’s fine! That’s what books like Cold Hearted are for. 

Or so I thought, anyway. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Cold Hearted is the eighth installment in Serena Valentino’s Villains series. The overall premise of the series is to retell Disney animated films from the point of view of the antagonist, with additional context to explain why they are the way they are. The one exception to this is The Beast Within which covers things from both Gaston’s POV and the Beast’s. Coincidentally, this is the only other book in the series that I’ve read. 

Though not presented really as a sequential series in the traditional sense, each book builds on the last, with the connecting framework of fairies and witches that influence the goings-on in the Many Kingdoms - the fairytale realm where the stories are set. It is with this framework that the story of Lady Tremaine is bookended. Cinderella’s Godmother has received a letter from her charge, who is now the Queen of her kingdom, begging for her Fairy Godmother to intervene and help her stepsisters, as she herself cannot do it. 

Why can’t she do it, you ask? Because of an enchantment placed by the Fairy Godmother preventing them from seeing each other of course. If that sounds messed up, then prepare for things to just get worse and worse. Though the Fairy Godmother is initially reluctant, other fairies intervene, imploring her to read the recorded history of Lady Tremaine, in the hopes that it will sway her to help. 

Lady Tremaine’s story, it turns out, begins exactly as one might expect. I suspect it pulls a little from the 2015 adaptation of the story as well. Her first husband was a man she loved very much, who she lost to illness before his time, leaving her a widow with two daughters. Six years after his death, at a house party thrown by one of her friends, she makes the acquaintance of Sir Edward, a man from the Many Kingdoms who has a young daughter of his own.

An all-around practical woman, Lady Tremaine is surprised by how quickly she finds herself falling in love with this man, and within two days accepts his proposal to marry him and relocate from London to the Many Kingdoms. He begs her to move there as quickly as possible, which she does, still excited to begin her new life. However, upon arrival, she finds that things are not at all what she expected.

Sir Edward is still very much obsessed with his late wife, and Lady Tremaine slowly realizes that he married her only so she could be a servant in the home and a nanny to his daughter without actually requiring a paycheck, all while he uses the money she brought into the marriage as a means to pay off his debts. He is a cruel, even abusive man and keeps the entire household under his sway. 

Meanwhile, Lady Tremaine tries various ways to signal to her friends in London that she needs help, and to find her way out of the kingdom. But due to the machinations of the aforementioned fairies and witches, her pleas for help go completely unanswered. Left without a recourse in the world, even after Sir Edward’s death, she slowly but surely becomes the cold and cruel woman we came to know in the animated film.

Here’s where I think this book falls short in a truly heartbreaking fashion. Much is made of the Book of Fairytales, where every story is written out and predestined. Lady Tremaine is told that because of this book, when she comes to the Many Kingdoms and becomes Cinderella’s Stepmother, she will inevitably become an Evil one, because that is the role Stepmothers fill in fairy tales. 

Though she does everything she can to avoid that fate, it is through the meddling of the witches and fairies that she is forced into it anyway. Following the marriage of her stepdaughter, she becomes deranged, and even abusive, towards her own daughters, who are even more frightened and lost in this strange land they’ve found themselves trapped in. The Fairy Godmother does eventually intervene on their behalf, to rescue them from their mother. But it is her subsequent treatment of Lady Tremaine that I found most disturbing. She does something to Lady Tremaine that she claims is what the lady would have wanted all along. It’s supposed to be triumphant, or at least satisfying. It is neither.

Yes, the woman’s behaviour was abhorrent, I’m not going to try and claim otherwise. However, the book spends a lot of time showing how all of this is predetermined, and showing how the main character was not only abused for years, but then trapped within an abusive situation by those meant to help her. So for the whole thing to end on such a callous note that missed the point of the entire story being told - at least in my eyes - left a bad taste in my mouth.

I don’t even like Lady Tremaine that much. But Lady Tremaine deserved better.

Cold Hearted is out June 29, 2021

Thank you to NetGalley and Disney Publishing for an advance copy of this book for review purposes