I thought the story was hilarious, one of the best I've heard recently, certainly one of the funniest. I like in particular how the prince's lack of face recognition is explained--he wasn't looking at her face, which fed into much of the motivation of the story because she would not want a man who sees her as a pair of breasts that happen to have some other parts attached. I loved how the real Cinderella character is also not interested. The title is particularly clever, as it is both perfectly evocative of the subversion of the Cinderella trope, and also plays on the pun of "getting off on the wrong foot". Beautifully done. Renee did a great reading as well.
I found the story charming and amusing, if a bit over-reliant on "bosom" references.
However, I kept getting drawn to issues with the writing -- first of all, SO MANY ADVERBS (especially modifiers ending in -ly). Secondly, the word "gaze" felt overused, especially in the 2nd and 3rd act.
There were a lot of bosom references, but I thought they fit well with the justification for why the prince didn't know her face, and the reasons why the prince was a turd of a romantic match. He's basically a lusty 14 year old with a shload of money and enough power that no one can tell him to stop staring at boobs.
I enjoyed listening to this -- in particular the voices from the narrator were great and made me smile. But the story itself sort of boils down to "what if, instead of nothing, Cinderella had a modest inheritance?"
I think that's an oversimplification. For starters, Cinderella herself was in the story as the cobbler's daughter, it's just that another woman with the same shoe size got tried first. The Cinderella character wasn't interested in the marriage either. Also, there were other things that were explored that I thought were worthwhile, such as how the hell did the prince decide that the shoe was the best way to find a woman who he'd supposedly fallen in love with? It's not like they were at a masquerade party.
Personally, I think the story succeeded at being funny while making me think about some of the dumber fairy tale tropes.
Stories like this are why I won't read romance. The heroine was perfectly fine. Then she met The One True Man(tm) and suddenly her life wasn't fine anymore! She needed The One True Man(tm) to be happy.
Gah. Do. Not. Like.
That was the one part that bothered me some. It's not that there's anything wrong with wanting a heroine to have a romantic interest in the end, and for certain she traded up in the exchange given what she values. I don't have anything against an intelligent and capable woman also having a romance, also desiring romance. But since the story in general takes great pains to overturn the typical fairy tale romance tale it seemed to me that getting together with him at the end of this particular story kind of overturned some of the theme that had been laid out so well before that.
The story didn't really do much for me. Since the glass slippers had a mundane origin and weren't Fairy Godmother provided, there really wasn't any fantasy element at all, so a bit of a let down
Wait, wait, I thought there was still a fairy godmother but she was offscreen. Else how would the cobbler's daughter have gotten the fancy dress and got her done up and her makeup done and all that? Getting a woman prepped for a fancy ball in that day and age is a job that couldn't be handled only by the woman herself, just fastening her dress requires hands that could reach places hers couldn't.
I'll second pretty much everything slic said, except I don't feel bad for the Marquis' daughter. I think it likely she'll be happy. She's gonna be a princess! How could having a bad husband dampen that?
I did worry about the fate of the marquis' daughter. I think she's more well suited for it than our protagonist, for certain, but I'd worry that he'd beat her when he was in a temper, or for his own sexual desires--his reference to being rough in bed after the first time made me think that, and if he sees fit to give such a warning I think it means that he'd be really really rough and I don't think he'd stop if she said she didn't like it.
