You probably know me as the younger ugly stepsister. The foolish stepsister. The girl who was so jealous of Cinderella's charm and beauty that I forced her to dress in rags and do all the chores while my mother and sister and I did nothing, sitting in our rooms all day while Cinderella slaved away to serve us. But that is not at all what happened. No one ever remembers that it wasn't just Cinderella's father who died. Mine did too. No one asks why I am considered ugly or remembers that I fell in love with Prince Curtis years before that fateful night at the ball. No one wonders what my family was doing while Cinderella was cleaning. But I am here to tell you. I am the ugly stepsister, and this is my story.
Author
Mary Mecham writes clean young adult fairy tale retellings packed full of adventure and romances. Get a FREE e-copy of her Rumpelstiltskin retelling, A Curse of Gold and Beauty, when you sign up for her newsletter at MaryMecham.com Mary is a born and raised Texan with a love of theater and books overshadowed only by her passion for disability advocacy. After she was cast in a theatrical production of Cinderella as the Ugly Stepsister, Mary decided to give a voice and background to her character and created her first novel Ugly: The Stepsister's Story. When she is not writing, Mary is an active disability advocate and speaker and holds multiple leadership positions in various disability rights related organizations, including running her own non-profit and coordinating Disability Book Week each year. Her dream is for everyone with a disability to find themselves represented in literature. Mary lives in Texas (and will never leave!) with her husband and three children. "I only review books I love. I don't want to tear down what someone worked hard on. If I didn't like it, I probably wasn't that book's target audience, so I don't review it, simple as that."
