Book Review: A Reluctant Cinderella by Alison Bond

Samantha Sharp is a football agent, and a very good one at that. She's worked hard to get to the top in a male oriented world, and it's finally paying off. However, when Sam is set up and her beloved career threatened, she's determined to clear her name and get to the bottom of who wants to destroy her life. She's also afraid that if her bosses dig hard enough, they're going to find out about something about Sam's past she has managed to keep hidden for a long time, and something that she doesn't want to come out. Is Samantha going to be able to fight for justice for herself, or is everything she's worked hard to build going to crumble down around her?

I've been looking forward to this book for a while now, and I was pleased to receive a copy of it from the publishers Penguin to review. I was intrigued about it... the blurb on the back and online doesn't really give anything away, and the cover is way too wishy washy for my liking, but still, we're always told not to judge a book by its cover. But in this case, it's not just the cover we mustn't judge by. The whole synopsis is quite misleading - it implies that this is a love story about a woman trying to succeed in her life, and win the heart of the man she loves, even though he might be dangerous. In reality, this is a book set in the world of football, it's agents and some rather shady Russians thrown into the mix too. Why the publishers feel it necessary to dupe their readers I don't know, but I would certainly have been more likely to pick this up had it got a stronger cover that actually represented the story inside, and a blurb that told me honestly what the book was about. The title is also very odd, again it has nothing to do with the book, and I think they could have titled it so much better to reflect the story itself. This doesn't detract from Alison Bond's fantastic story and writing, but I feel she's been let down by her publishers big time here.

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