Ogre Enchanted is not a good book

I have been meaning to write a whole essay about my feelings on this book for years, since I first read it, but it turns out I just hate it so much I didn’t want to. So a lot of this is repurposed from my Bookwyrm review.

What is Ogre Enchanted?

In 1997, Gail Carson Levine published Ella Enchanted, a reimagining of Cinderella about a spunky teen named Ella who had been cursed at birth to always be obedient. The fairy who did this to her, Lucinda, loved to go around giving kids little “helpful” “gifts” like that. She also sometimes turns people into squirrels. Ella’s fairy godmother/household chef, Mandy, challenges Lucinda to spend a month each as an obedient child and as a squirrel, and at the end of the ordeal she understands what a horrible thing she’s done, but she still refuses to remove Ella’s curse because she’s come to believe that doing big magic is wrong. In the end Ella breaks the curse on her own and lives happily ever after with her True Love, Prince Charmont.

In 2006, Fairest was released. This was a retelling of Snow White set in the same universe, but with a different cast of characters. Ella’s friend Areida makes an appearance, as does Lucinda, but in perfectly logical ways that don’t overpower the story. Fairest is very much its own thing only tangentially related to Ella Enchanted.

Ogre Enchanted came out in 2018. At first it appeared to be its own thing, too. Set some time before Ella Enchanted, a girl named Evie turns down her friend Wormy’s sudden marriage proposal. Lucinda appears and “punishes” her by turning her into an ogre. This is kind of out of the blue; we never heard about Lucinda doing anything like that to adults before, but it does fit with her romantic pre-change-of-heart personality. Unless Evie accepts another marriage proposal within two months, she’ll be trapped as an ogre forever.

Why it’s bad

The story meandered to fill time. It tempted me with ogre lore only to conclude that nope, this entire species of thinking speaking people is irredeemably evil except for Evie, who isn't even really an ogre in the first place.

Also for some reason Evie can’t tell anyone about the curse or the fact that she’s really human?? This made sense for Ella; she was specifically ordered not to tell anyone about her obedience curse. Tacking it on here just feels cheap, like Levine couldn’t think of a better reason for Evie not to tell anyone. Hell, even just thinking “No one would believe me” would have made more sense, since ogres are notoriously deceptive in this universe.

Also, Levine insisted on shoving in backstory for characters from Ella Enchanted and made the world seem so very small. The appearance of Peter, Ella's father, early in the book was fine. It was a nice cameo! Evie thinks maybe he’s a nice guy, which is a great bit of irony for anyone who’s read Ella Enchanted.

It's the latter half that annoys me. More characters from Ella Enchanted show up! Peter proposes to Eleanor, Ella’s mother. Lucinda shows up and Mandy urges Eleanor to accept the proposal lest she get cursed. (Again, I emphasize, this book is the first time we heard of Lucinda cursing anyone who turned down a marriage proposal.) Then Peter and Eleanor are given one of Lucinda’s dubious “blessings”, cursed so that they will always love each other no matter what. After which Peter drops the facade of loving Eleanor and goes all scheming villain. Boring tbh? Why did Ella's jerkass dad need to be even more of a one-dimensional villain? Why wouldn't Mandy have told Ella the circumstances of the proposal — instead telling her that Eleanor always loved Peter and not why? Who asked for this?

In the end everyone finds out Peter's a scumbag but he gets off scot-free because we can't change the timeline (if we could, Evie and Eleanor might as well have gotten together; they had way more chemistry than any other couple).

It concludes with the message that even if you think you don't want to get married you really do — spoilers, the curse is broken when Wormy proposes to Evie again and this time she accepts, not to break the curse but because she really does love him after all.

What even is the moral of her story? Don't turn down the boy you're not in love with, because actually yes you are? It's just so bad. I hate it.