Feminist, fierce, and wildly fresh: Lady Tremaine is my kind of fairy tale. As we resurrect and re-examine the historical women we’ve maligned, Hochhauser insists we include the wicked stepmothers. Hochhauser’s prose is poetic, her story hypnotic, and her characters will live in my head and heart forever. Lady Tremaine is destined to be one of the biggest books of the year.

Hochhauser’s splendid debut retells the “Cinderella” story from the stepmother’s perspective…Hochhauser grounds her tale with a convincing depiction of the medieval setting and offers a stirring exploration of maternal instinct and female strength. It’s a winner.

In breathtakingly beautiful prose, Hochhauser unpicks this old fairytale and weaves it into a feminist war cry. Visceral, powerful and stunningly told, Lady Tremaine soars.

Lady Tremaine left me in awe. Breathing new life into a timeless fairy tale, this is the story of a complex, resilient mother who demonstrates that love does not always come naturally: it is often built on difficult choices. A must-read for anyone who believes in the power of second chances, the nuances of motherhood, and the ways in which strength evolves through adversity. Hochhauser’s storytelling is a poignant reminder that even fairy tale villains have a story worth telling. My favorite read of the year so far!

Cinderella gets the Maleficent treatment in the darkly sumptuous and deeply addictive Lady Tremaine, which reimagines the classic fairy tale from the eyes of its villain: Ethelreda, the wicked stepmother. She isn’t wicked so much as deeply weighed down—by a crumbling manor house, two daughters in need of secure futures, and a stepdaughter reimagined not as a put-upon heroine but a passive-aggressive prig. A royal ball offers the chance of a lifetime, but a sinister plot underlies both the ball and the prince’s hunt for a wife, and Ethelreda finds herself fighting tooth and nail to save her family from ruin. She’s a heroine to root for with every turn of the page, and Rachel Hochhauser is a major new talent to watch.

Hochhauser’s prose is a gift. Lady Tremaine is one of the best novels I’ve read in a long time—for its sentences, for its grace, and for its originality. I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I am envious of any reader picking up this book for the first time.”

Masterful and revolutionary, this spellbinding reimagining transforms a familiar villain into a woman of extraordinary depth. With emotional intelligence and lush prose, the novel reveals universal truths about maternal devotion and the invisible battles women fight. Feminist storytelling at its finest.

Both intimate and epic in scope, Lady Tremaine shatters our preconceptions of a famous fairy tale villain, presenting instead a mesmerizing portrait of a woman who discovers that real enchantment comes from daring to rewrite your own destiny. With spellbinding prose and haunting moral complexity, Hochhauser excavates the heart of a timeless story, revealing the profound humanity that exists in the spaces between good and wicked. A stunning debut.

Wit, wisdom, poetry on every page. Hochhauser brilliantly takes a classic from a shelf and reads from it in a voice that’s both hauntingly familiar and crisp in contemporary understanding. Her reappraisal of the cages we build for ourselves—in marriage and in love—reveals the freedom we possess, if only we’d look up and wait patiently for the hunting hawk’s heart to return to our outstretched arm. Amazing work.