Search - Bound

A beautiful quote from the book: "If you fall into water, you my still be saved. If you fall down in literary matters, there is no life left for you." How beautiful is that?
I'm requesting Beast from my library today. I'm so surprised I enjoyed this as much as I did being that I'm way more of a non-fiction and memoir fan than a fantasty/sci-fi/fairytale reader.
How could I read the description on the back of the book and not want to know what that was about? For the most part it felt like a light, fun read but a little more than three quarters of the way through something happened and I felt my breath catch in my throat. Napoli has a way with her writing that really sucks you in and gives you a real feel for something unknown. I know next to nothing about China at all. Much less China in this dynasty, the beliefs of people in Chine, how they look at ancestry, etc. But reading this made me feel like I did,I felt how important that fish was to Xing Xing. I think I actually felt a bit of hatred towards her step-mother after that awful situation.
Loved the "flirting" with the prince too - awesome part! Maybe I found a new genre? I'm wide open for suggestions too!

Reviewed by Taylor Rector for TeensReadToo.com

Xing Xing is a young woman who is treated like the classic lower class stepchild in Donna Jo Napoli's BOUND.

Her mother died when she was very young and her father then remarried. The woman that takes care of her (if you want to call it that) is her father's new wife. Xing Xing has a stepsister who has bound feet and can't walk, so she is treated by her stepmother as though she were a maid.

The story is told in the classic tale of Cinderella, with the wicked step-family and the prince trying to find the girl who the missing shoe fits. There is even a great mix of Chinese culture thrown in! I learned a lot about the old (and now mostly) unused tradition of binding a girl's feet.

I enjoyed BOUND because I really love the Cinderella story. Xing Xing becomes a character that you want to see succeed and a girl whom you want to find a suitable husband. You care what happens to her and want to know how she survives her mean stepmother.