Books book reviews The Sublime Ache and Freedom of Freya Marske’s Cinder House Ghost story, love story, and an incarnation that deeply knows its roots, Cinder House is a sweet fresh thing. By Maya Gittelman | Published on November 18, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share What makes a good fairytale reimagining? Something not dissimilar, perhaps, from what makes a good ghost story: a fresh twist on a familiar concept, atmosphere, and reverence for the source material. In a world saturated with done-to-death remakes and soulless cash-grab franchising, Freya Marske assures us that fresh and thoughtful reimaginings are far from dead. Ghost story, love story, and an incarnation that deeply knows its roots, Cinder House is a sweet fresh thing. A spell of a story, bewitching and inviting.  We meet Ella at the age of sixteen, at the moment of her death. Her stepmother had murdered her father shortly beforehand, and so Ella inherited his house just long enough for it to rightfully belong to her in death. At first, this is paltry consolation to being murdered. Her scheming stepmother and stepsisters order her about as they did when she was alive, only more so because not only can she not fight back, it turns out they can hurt her quite badly by messing with her house.  Because in Marske’s imagining, Ella’s ghost is inextricably tied to the house. She feels through it, aching through its floorboards and shuddering with its windowpanes. This means that her stepfamily breaking mirrors or scattering beads in her crevices hurts her with a wrongness that almost feels like being hit, somewhere deep inside the specter of her. Yet the connection also ends up being quite the gift—while technically confined to the house she haunts, some experimentation proves that if Ella carries, for example, a piece of roof tile with her, she can venture further into town. She can rediscover the places she took for granted when she was young and alive: the ballet, the night-market, the university—until midnight, when her ghosthood snaps her back to the house. Nothing, however, can save her from being dead: No one can see or hear her except the other inhabitants of her house, which is to say the awful company of her stepfamily.   As Ella navigates this undeath, she learns and grows as much as she can from within the confines of her ghosthood, the unwritten rules of her haunting. She even manages to track down and strike up correspondence with the foremost expert of Intangibility, the sorcerer Mazamire. The Cajarac scholar chooses to stay fairly anonymous themself, as attitudes toward magic in their homeland are less permissive than in Ella’s own realm, so they don’t pry too heavily into Ella’s intentions. Through Mazamire and a local charm-selling fairy Quaint who has no trouble seeing ghosts, Ella is almost able to have something like a life.  When word goes out that the crown prince is throwing a festival in search of a bride, Ella isn’t thinking about marriage—she knows she’s too dead for that. But when Quaint suggests a pricey bargain—access to some of the treasures within Ella’s house’s walls in exchange for three nights of solidity—Ella can’t say no. When else would she have the opportunity to be a body again—and while being one, to feel so much at once? It’s three nights of dancing, every unattached young woman vying for the prince, or at least some good fun.  It is that, so much life it hurts to press up against it. And when Ella steals away for a moment of peace, committed to enjoying her spell as deeply as she can, she finds more than she bargained for—the prince himself, stolen away for that same moment of peace in the night air.   Ella can’t let on that she’s a ghost, but it turns out, Prince Jule has a secret of his own: a blessing turned curse that happens to mean his own private passions align quite genuinely with Ella’s own. The connection that sparks between them is almost accidental and painfully true, which has no bearing on the preexisting political arrangements for Jule’s marriage, nor the conditions of Ella’s deadness. But through sheer will and the surprising involvement of Scholar Mazamire, Ella and Jule’s stories fold together in a swell of sublime and tender ache. Buy the Book Cinder House Freya Marske Buy Book Cinder House Freya Marske Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget While the story beats will slot neatly in place for readers who’ve only seen the 1997 Brandy classic, the 1950 animated Cinderella, or have only vaguely heard the tale1, I also found it rewarding as a childhood fan of the Perrault and Grimm variations, which is to say this love story contains blood and wound and tragedy. Each familiar beat is adapted fittingly and creatively: the stepfamily’s motivations, the deus ex machina of a fairy godmother, the glass slippers, and what it means, at its core, to be designated cinder. Ash, remnant. It fits so well into a haunting. Ghost as self plus place, a snapshot of a person when they die yet remain, without living or leaving. Suspended, quite literally in suspense. Place and ownership do have power, and Marske makes magic out of that fact in Cinder House and beyond in subtle, tangible ways that feel immediately true.  It’s a rare thing that a book’s ache leaves me satisfied—especially one as brief as a novella—but Cinder House’s ache hits just right, leaving me feeling full rather than bereft. I am perhaps the target audience here: I love cleverly textured fairytale reimaginings, comfortable queerness and bisexuality that emerges as naturally and obviously as my own did for me. I love stories that find a way to make ache into something almost as sweet as longing, and Marske executed her premise perfectly.  Indeed, this is almost certainly my favorite iteration of The Prince ()—at the very least tied with Paolo Montalban, Filipino heartthrob, which is high praise indeed. The life Marske gives him, the depth and duty to him, the curse of his birth—I fell for him like Ella does. The romance of Cinder House is not exactly what you expect—I did mention the tragedy—but that only makes it richer and thoroughly more rewarding. Think Julie and the Phantoms in terms of tragedy, not Gothic sadness, which is to say grief shot through with true joy. Without too many spoilers, there’s queer polyamory here, and it develops as naturally as any love story, slotting within the confines of its circumstance. As always, Marske delivers fresh and original sex mixed with magic, and here there’s the added dimension of imagining sex through the lens of somebody who does not have access to a body in the same way most living, abled people do. It’s accessible, hot, original, and frankly freeing, which not only makes for a satisfying reading experience for the scene but also ties in thematically so well.  Through her Last Binding series I know I’m also simply a huge fan of Marske’s writing; it rarely doesn’t work for me. She turns a phrase like a key in a door you thought was part of the wall: neat yet surprising, a thought a moment ago you could’ve sworn you’ve had before, but hadn’t. If you’ve loved her work before, this will hit just right, and if you haven’t, this is an excellent place to start. [end-mark] Cinder House is published by Tordotcom Publishing.Read an excerpt. I can’t speak to the live actions with white leads, having never seen them. ︎The post The Sublime Ache and Freedom of Freya Marske’s <i>Cinder House</i> appeared first on Reactor.