Mithila Reads

More often than not, fairy tales are retellings of some other fairy tales or legends. “Ye Xian”, a Chinese fairytale, and “Bawang Merah Bawang Putih”, and a Malay-Indonesian fairytale, are similar to the popular “Cinderella”, a European fairytale. Elizabeth Lim takes inspiration from Ye Xian and crafts a story that spans two world wars, three generations of women, unbearable losses, and an everlasting need for loving and being loved.

Title: Fishbone Cinderella
Author: Elizabeth Lim
Publisher: Del Rey Books (an imprint of the Random House Group, a division of Penguin Random House)
Genre: Fiction
Sub-genre(s): Fantasy, Historical Fiction
Mithila’s Prose Index (on a scale of 1(low)-5(high)): 4.5
How I found this book: NetGalley e-ARC
Expected publishing date: 28 July 2026

The story starts amid a war many of us may not know much about – The Second Sino-Japanese war, which lasted between 1937 to 1945. Ha Yut Ying, barely a girl of seven years, is thrown deep into the well of survival. She unwillingly understands at this early age that her femininity is a liability, in an age where men, boys and their soldier toys are well taken care of, and women, girls and their porcelain dolls are treated as commodities, traded like a game of pass the parcel. While her grandmother’s (Ah Ma) treatment of her varies with the moon – either with the indifference shown towards a servant girl or with the gratitude shown to a caregiver – her mother’s (Mama) concern and love for her is shown in muted ways. Both Mama and Ah Ma are battling their own demons, but Mama’s demon is an inherited one, and she fears that her daughter is now afflicted with the same demon she spent her life trying to bury and hide. For her protection, she gives her a family heirloom – a gold bracelet with a peanut pendant – with the instruction to never part with it.

Ha Yut Ying is then sent away by Mama and Ah Ma to Hong Kong, under the promise of education and a better life. But when she lands at the doorstep of her paternal aunt (Gu Ma), her absent father (Papa) and his new wife (Sai Ma), she soon realises that all that glitters is not ruby and gold. While Gu Ma is the owner of a shoe factory and has immense wealth and connections, and her father and stepmother are rich too, they are warped up in their own foibles and dramas and past mistakes, and treat Yut Ying as another burden to care for. Ha Yut Ying is made to work as a seamstress in the shoe factory, with her wages snatched from her under various guises. What follows is a story of how Ha Yut Ying finds her own family, suffers losses at a young age, and takes dramatic decisions to build a life of her own, albeit the demon breathing down her neck and the neck of her new family.

The story is paced in an unputdownable manner. Every chapter flows into the other, and the story is told from the perspective of Yut Ying (with the English name Helen), her daughter (Marigold) and switches seamlessly from the timeline of Yut Ying’s childhood, teenage and adulthood, and Marigold’s present day. The prose is simple to read, yet filled with emotion and emotion-evoking language, and is told in first -person narrative. It takes you into a village in China, and then a locale in Hong Kong, and then to Kansas City and San Francisco, California in the same exploratory and emotional tone.

Themes covered in this book include: complex family dynamics and familial obligations; Chinese culture and the socio-political environment in China and Hong Kong, including the impact of wars on blameless civilians; relationships such as mother-daughter bonds, romantic relationships and the bitter truths of it, friendships that span ages, the love-hate continuum between siblings; immigrating to another country with hopes of a better future. While these may seem a tad bit too many themes for a 450 page book, the skill with which Elizabeth Lim weaves this into a historical fantasy read is the real showstopper.

While writing this review, I browsed through Elizabeth Lim’s website and found some more of her fantasy fiction books I’d absolutely love to read soon – A Forgery of Fate, which claims to have overtones of Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid; and Her Radiant Curse, which is again inspired by various folklore.

Altogether, Fishbone Cinderella is a remarkable read! I would recommend this book to fans of fairy tale retellings (specially if you, like me, once upon a time, adored the way he-who-must-not-be-named wrote a series of dark retellings of popular fairy tales), and for readers who are interested in reading more about women and their lives in the 20th century.

Thank you Del Rey Publishing and NetGalley for giving me an opportunity to read and review this book ahead of its publishing date.