Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

**THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS** Mechanica is a Cinderella retelling with a steampunk element, a heroine that can fix and build all kinds of things, a POC love interest, and an extremely adorable mechanical mini horse as sidekick. Sounds really good, right? And it was, for about 80% of the story, but the last couple of chapters ruined it for me. But let me go back to the positives, I liked the protagonist, Nicolette, from the very start, she’s one of those heroines who will never stop to feel sorry for themselves--no matter how bad things are, and I admired her for it. Her determination, her spirit, the fact that she not only hopes for a better life but does something about it, and how she works SO HARD, my goodness, I was exhausted just from reading about it. On top of all the chores she has to do around the house every single day, plus the errands for her stepmother and stepsisters (the Steps, like Nicolette calls them), she always finds the time for her own outrageous projects, to go sell her stuff at the market, to make friends and plan things with them--truly remarkable. I was also pretty intrigued by the fantasy element in this story, Nicolette’s late mother used to build these mechanical creatures out of plain materials--metal, glass--but then somehow they became sentient, to the point that, the people who bought them sometimes treated them as pets, and when Nicolette finds her mother’s workshop, she comes across a substance that she believes was her mother’s secret "ingredient" for the creatures, and I was so into this, I wanted to know everything about it, where did it came from and how did she get it? What was it exactly? How does it work? And why? I kept waiting for an explanation but it never came. At some point Nicolette even starts using the substance, and still no explanation is given to the reader. Other aspect of this story that I felt like was lacking was everything to do with the Steps--apart from one or two scenes, they’re basically not even present, Nicolette certainly talks about them, about the wicked things they say and do, and about the endless list of jobs they demand from her every day, but there are hardly any scenes where one can actually “see” the Steps being horrible. Plus, we never get to see their reaction to Nicolette’s success, because they kind of disappear altogether from the story towards the end. Now, the thing that bothered me the most: the romance. I’m sorry but it was just... so... wrong. Especially for a story that’s inspired in a fairy-tale. Truthfully, I don’t need fluffy happy ever afters, I don’t even need romance in a story (though I prefer that it is there and that it makes me cry and laugh and almost sends my heart into cardiac arrest with joy), but if there is romance, I need it to *at least* have some kind of consistency, to make sense, to not leave me confused and thinking What the hell just happened...? Well, guess what happened with Mechanica?? -.-' The romance is not a strong element to begin with, Nicolette falls for her love interest after seeing him maybe twice, and even though I wasn’t entirely happy with this, I kept saying to myself that insta-love happens all the time in fairy-tales, and that the story focuses on Nicolette’s journey to be free and independent anyway, but it’s hard to keep making excuses when all Nicolette suddenly can think about is this boy and how she's so in love with him. The worst was still to come though, ***and please stop reading this review now if you don’t want spoilers, because I can’t go on expressing my frustration regarding the romance without spoiling it*** because this love interest barely shows any strong feelings for Nicolette, but still, in what feels like a completely random scene, asks her to marry him, and get this, at that point Nicolette had realized that maybe he loved another girl too, their good friend Caro, and she asks him about it... and that's when he starts telling this incredibly touching tale of how "there hasn't been a single moment in my life when I haven't loved Caro" and how "I fell in love with her before I could speak, before I could think". WHAAAAAT?? ... he goes on and on about his love for this other girl, and he wants Nicolette too. IMAGINE MY HORROR. I abhor love triangles of any kind, and this one was particularly offensive to me because 1. it just appeared, suddenly, out of nowhere, without a warning whatsoever, 2. the guy (and Nicolette) thinks it's okay??, and 3. when later Nicolette talks about this whole situation with Caro, Caro is like, Oh it's fine! So what if he likes us both, and we both like him? Maybe one day we will fall in love with someone else, or maybe we'll always love him, doesn't matter! What matters is that we stay bffs forever! The three of us! I kid you not, this is more or less how the thing goes, and I could barely believe my eyes--what happened to the story I was enjoying so much... ? What happened?? I understand that with retellings there's always the need for plot twists, especially with fairy-tales, I mean, we've all heard these stories being retold so many times before, but in this case, in terms of the romance, and how the whole thing comes together in the end, with all its twists and turns, is wide of the mark for me. It's a bizarre ending, to say the least, totally anticlimactic, and like I said before, ruined the book for me.