Cinder & Ella by Kelly Oram

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Pages: 254

Published October 1st 2014 by Bluefields

Summary:

It’s been almost a year since eighteen-year-old Ella Rodriguez was in a car accident that left her crippled, scarred, and without a mother. After a very difficult recovery, she’s been uprooted across the country and forced into the custody of a father that abandoned her when she was a young child. If Ella wants to escape her father’s home and her awful new stepfamily, she must convince her doctors that she’s capable, both physically and emotionally, of living on her own. The problem is, she’s not ready yet. The only way she can think of to start healing is by reconnecting with the one person left in the world who’s ever meant anything to her—her anonymous Internet best friend, Cinder.
…
Hollywood sensation Brian Oliver has a reputation for being trouble. There’s major buzz around his performance in his upcoming film The Druid Prince, but his management team says he won’t make the transition from teen heartthrob to serious A-list actor unless he can prove he’s left his wild days behind and become a mature adult. In order to douse the flames on Brian’s bad-boy reputation, his management stages a fake engagement for him to his co-star Kaylee. Brian isn’t thrilled with the arrangement—or his fake fiancée—but decides he’ll suffer through it if it means he’ll get an Oscar nomination. Then a surprise email from an old Internet friend changes everything

After seeing this book pop up in my news feed on Goodreads as well as WordPress, I thought I’d give this book a go! After all, who else can relate to a fantasy nerd who runs a blog and devours book but yours truly?

Ellamara was named after a character in a fantasy series that was widely popular when her mother was a teen and the love for books as well as fantasy was passed down onto her daughter. She decided to run a blog which was a place where she reviewed books, movies and had discussions [or rants] about particular things. Along the way she caught the attention of Cinder, a huge fan of the very series Ellamara’s namesake is from.

Cinder is, in fact, Hollywood’s “It” boy, Brian Oliver, who was just cast to play Cinder from the Druid Chronicles – for years Cinder and Ella speak via the internet and become great friends, but on Ella’s birthday one year he loses contact with her – he doesn’t know this but she was in a car accident with her mother which cost Ella’s mom her life and landed her in the hospital for 8 months.

This book is kind of filled with everything that I loathe and yet at the same time I found I had to finish it.

-Girl who hates her father
-Girl who gets offended and often
-Girl who wonders why everyone hates her when she makes no move to be friendly
-Girl who says she’s not fragile or broken but is in fact fragile and broken and were are reminded at every.single.page.

-In case you forget she’s handicapped now you’ll be reminded of it.
-You’ll be reminded that she’s also not fragile and broken [but she actually is fragile and broken.]

-Everyone is horribly cruel to Girl and I mean EVERYONE.

-Guy who is obsessed with her
-Guy who is possessive of her
-Jerkhole of a guy who is continuously a jerkhole

I kept reading though because I wanted to know how this book went, shameful of me but it’s kind of like a bad hallmark movie you just get sucked into reading. That’s how this felt.. I enjoyed the nerdy references. But on one hand you have the annoying Ella who I couldn’t connect with and Brian “Cinder” Oliver was equally as annoying, too. Brian knew what was best for Ella – always ALWAYS… telling her what to do. Argh, yeah… I’m in the minority here when I say that I did not enjoy this book.