Title: A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street
Author: Jaimie Admans
Genre: Romance; Rom-Com; Contemporary fiction; Fairytale with modern twist; Fairytale reimagined; Feel-good;
Pages: 296
Release date: 4th July ’23
I received this Advance Review Copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you Boldwood Books and Netgalley for this amazing opportunity!!
“I don’t want to meet Prince Charming. Cinderella would’ve been better off living a happy life with her animal friends than marrying a Prince who only recognise her by her shoe size.”
BLURB
A picture-perfect town; a place where dreams come true. Welcome to Ever After Street… Will a kiss at midnight change her life forever? Sadie Winters has spent her whole life doing as she’s told. But when her overbearing aunt forbids her from going to the farewell ball at the beloved local castle. Sadie has had enough! One magical makeover, one midnight curfew, and wearing a dress of her own creation, Sadie is unrecognisable as Ever After Street’s shy seamstress. Sadie might dream of meeting a handsome prince but the only person to cross her path is Witt – the slightly awkward estate agent intending to sell the castle and dash Sadie’s dreams forever. As the clock strikes midnight, Sadie and Witt share a magical kiss and Sadie knows her heart is in serious danger. Surely Witt must feel the same way…? Sadie can’t hang around to find out. But as reality dawns the next day, and fate brings Witt to Sadie’s door again. Sadie realises that her mystery estate agent prince has absolutely no idea who she is! Sadie can’t forget their midnight kiss, but is she brave enough to change her life and find love along the way?
“The memories are like childhood stories, long forgotten but coming back in fragmented parts, like a favourite old that you read again as an adult.”
REVIEW
A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street is Jaimie Admans‘s latest book launched this week. After publishing ten amazing books with HQ Digitals, Jaimie has moved to a new publisher, Boldwood Books. This combo has kick-started their journey together with A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street and after reading the book we are pretty sure this combo is going to be phenomenal.
A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street is a re-imagination of all our favourite fairytales as kids, The Cinderella. Obviously with a tinge of a modern twist, Jaimie’s spectacular storytelling skills and read-worthy characters. This book is the story of Sadie, who is a seamstress in a fairytale-like town, which is located near a gigantic castle. The Ever-after-street came into existence because of the castle, all the shops in the ever-after-street is a Disney Fairytales inspired shops. Even these shops are named after fairytales. For example, The Cinderella Shop; Rupanzel’s Salon; 1001 Nights Restaurant; Sleeping Beauty’s once upon a dream shop; Tale as old as time bookshop; The colours of the Wind Museum; Mermaid’s Treasure Trove; Neverland Sweet Shop; Beast’s Enchanted Rose flower shop.
The castle owner has decided to sell the castle to a supermarket which would be catastrophic to the entire Ever-after-street. Sadie alongside all the shopkeepers is against this decision because of this they unanimously decide not to go to the farewell ball hosted by the castle owner. However, Sadie would like to see the castle for the first and last time before it was demolished. So she decides to go to the ball without her aunt Ebony‘s knowledge and that’s where her Cinderella story begins.
First of all, after growing up we all had a lot of issues with Disney’s Princesses especially how problematic it is when Princesses wait desperately for a Prince to show up in order to solve all the issues they are having with their lives. And these princess doesn’t have much of a career or ambitions for themselves. With this book, Jaimie has taken the liberty to tweak the basic plot line of Cinderella and gave a lot more character, ambitions, desires and goals to our Sadie aka the representation of Cinderella in our book. This slight change in the plot line made all the differences. Jaimie has also given a solid reason why Prince Charming aka Witt doesn’t recognise his Cinderella.
“Someone who loved you would love that part of you. They’d love everything about you, every little part that makes you you.”
The characterisation of both Sadie and Witt was genuine. The flaws, crappy decision-making skills, ambitions, and introverted characteristics made these characters relatable and loveable. Though at times, you might wanna strangle Sadie for her decisions and her inability to fight her aunt to make things her way in the Cinderella shop, but if you take a moment, you would’ve done the same thing, if you were in her shoes. These teeny-weeny character traits of the lead characters made the book all the more interesting and magnificent.
One other character who will haul your attention would be Scarlett, Sadie’s cousin. Her impulsive, extroverted and jovial characteristics make her loveable. Scarlett is the kind of cousin everyone deserves to have in their life. The way she supports Sadie through thick and thin, at times defying her mother, Ebony showed how loyal she was to Sadie.
On the whole, it is one nice book you can read to escape the harshness of reality and dwell in the spectacular world created by Jaimie 🙂
“I don’t believe in fairy tales, but I believe in love. I think falling in love is the closest thing we get to a fairy tale in real life.”
MY VIEWS
I love Jaimie, I have been waiting for this book to be launched for a very long time. Maybe right from the moment, Jaimie started her initial discussion with her new publisher. I’m so glad that I was able to read the ARC of the book. You could say I was literally praying for the Publisher to send the ARC to me without fail. That’s how much I was waiting for this book. And did this book actually meet my expectation? Yes! It did!
This book is a quintessential Jaimie Admans‘ book. It will instantly kidnap you from reality and show you good times with its amazing plot line, characters, scenes, sentences, and words. I was living in this wonderful Ever-After-Street near the castle for solid three to four days and it was mind-blowing.
A few things I totally adored about this book was the way in which Sadie made her dresses. All of her dresses have been explained so meticulously that you would go ahead and add these dresses to your cart without a second thought. One of the best things about Jaimie is the authenticity she exhibits through her character and especially through their career. I’m generally obsessed with fictional characters’ careers because that’s how I get to know about certain industries and roles through a microscopic vision. How Sadie passionately talks about her designs and behind the screen how she stitches them and all has been written down beautifully. Even in the case of Witt, as a real estate agent, how much knowledge he has with respect to buildings, especially old buildings were nothing short of excellent.
“I want to make normal people feel special when they put my dresses on.”
The next thing I liked about the book is the castle itself. The library, very similar to Beast’s library, with hidden rooms, tunnels, gardens and towers. Every second spent inside the castle was absolutely exciting. Once you read this book you will feel like you have actually been inside a castle which has so many stories to share. The regular Disney Fairytale references in the book made it extremely wonderful and it ignited a feeling of nostalgia which would make anybody get existed in a fraction of seconds.
I personally liked Witt very much, I liked everything about him and especially the way his character has been designed. I don’t wanna give away a lot because that will spoil all the fun of you guys. The only thing I can say is, I liked the way he reacts to situations. I was also able to relate to Sadie a lot because of her inability to stand up for herself against her family and voice out what she needs. These things made her real to me.
I loved the book so much. My rating for this book would be 4 out of 5 stars
I would suggest this book to all romance and rom-com lovers. Even young readers can read this book as it has a lot of fairytale moments and young readers would definitely enjoy it very much.
“Sometimes the right people say things in the right way for you to hear it with your heart rather than your ears”
You can go ahead and read the book!
Happy reading folks!
~ Meenu
