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Verdict: A bright, big-hearted butch/femme Cinderella with a scene-stealing gay fairy godfather and a fairy-tale-sized HEA, held back by insta-love pacing, cartoon villains and a reader base too small and too friendly to test it hard.
Best for: Readers who want a comfort-read retelling where the butch is Cinderella, who enjoy camp and broad villainy, and who are happy to take the love story on fairy-tale terms rather than watch it build slowly.
Heat level: ★★★☆☆ (3/5 — open door, estimated; romance.io has no steam rating for it)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.8/5 — a 4.52 Goodreads average, but across only 56 ratings and almost entirely from readers who arrived at launch)
Tropes: Cinderella retelling, butch/femme, insta-love, fairy godfather, evil stepmother, closeted heroine, overbearing mother, workplace romance, class difference, guaranteed HEA.
Embers by Tiffany E. Taylor is a standalone contemporary lesbian romance novella from Painted Hearts Publishing, released in May 2024, that rebuilds Cinderella around a butch chef — and its collision is Embry Novak, trapped in her father’s house by a manipulative stepmother, meeting Sapphire Keene, the femme about to take over a thriving organic grocery company and still hiding who she wants from her own mother.
It holds a 4.52 average across 56 Goodreads ratings, with not a single one-star rating on either. There are no trade reviews, no blog coverage I could find, and romance.io and StoryGraph have two ratings apiece. So the real question is not whether readers liked it — nearly all of them did — but which readers those were, and what a stranger to this author should expect.
What Is Embers About?
Embers is a contemporary fairy-tale retelling in the most literal sense: the stepmother, the two cruel stepsiblings (stepbrothers here), the grieving father, the fairy godparent, the ball — all present, all translated into a modern setting. The workplace angle is what grounds it. Sapphire’s company, Crunch, runs a produce subscription box and one flagship store, and that store is where Embry’s world and Sapphire’s first touch.
The key inversion is who gets to be Cinderella. Embry is the butch, the trained chef, the dutiful daughter doing the cooking and cleaning in a house that punishes her for being herself — and at least one reviewer casts her as the “prince charming” figure too, which is exactly the double role butch/femme readers came for. Sapphire lacks nothing materially and everything personally: a career she loves, a mother who wants her married to a man, and a string of secret encounters that never add up to a life. Both women are fighting a parent for the right to exist, and that parallel is the book’s spine.
What Makes This Butch/Femme Cinderella Retelling Work
- Marlow the fairy godfather: The most-praised character. A flamboyant gay matchmaker in sequined sneakers, he comes up again and again in the reviews, and readers credit him with the book’s humour.
- The butch Cinderella: Casting the butch heroine as the downtrodden stepdaughter gives the old story a new charge, and readers of butch/femme romance respond to it directly — one says she wished she’d had this story when she was young.
- Two mirrored family fights: Reviewers keep noting that both heroines have to push back against a parent, which gives Sapphire a real arc rather than making her a prize.
- Tone: “Fun,” “funny” and “heartwarming” recur. Readers treat it as a comfort read that still has some weight underneath the camp.
- The ending: A fairy-tale HEA delivered without hedging — and, readers note, extended beyond the main couple.
Book Synopsis
Embry Novak is a chef who has put her own life on hold. Her father is still grieving her mother, and her stepmother Caroline — conveniently “fragile” — has convinced him he is about to lose a second wife to illness unless his daughter moves home and takes care of everything. So Embry does. She cooks, she cleans, she absorbs the contempt of Caroline’s two sons, and she folds away the butch identity that the household refuses to tolerate, telling herself it is temporary.
Across town, Sapphire Keene is about to become chief executive of Crunch, the organic produce company her father built. Professionally she is ready. Personally she is stuck: her mother treats the job as a distraction from finding a husband, and Sapphire has never told her that the people who have always caught her eye are masculine-of-centre women. What she has had instead is a handful of discreet, forgettable encounters.
Then Embry walks into the Crunch store on a shopping trip and meets its manager, Marlow Matheson — a man with an eye for a match and absolutely no intention of minding his own business. He has decided the chef and the incoming CEO belong together. Caroline, her sons, Sapphire’s mother and the ordinary demands of a company changing hands all seem to have decided otherwise. The question is whether two women who have spent years making themselves smaller for their families can let themselves want something this big.
My Review
The concept is the strongest thing here, and it is a good one. A Cinderella in which the butch is the one scrubbing floors for an ungrateful stepfamily is a simple inversion that says something real: plenty of masculine-of-centre women have had to hide in a family home to keep the peace. Taylor sets that against a femme heroine hiding in a different way, and the pairing gives the retelling a reason to exist beyond the costume change.
The second strength is Marlow, and he is not a small one. A fairy godparent is the part of Cinderella that most retellings fumble — too much magic and the heroine has no agency, too little and the story loses its lift. Making him a gay store manager with a matchmaker’s instinct keeps the magic human, and readers adore him. He is the character reviewers single out most often, and the book’s humour runs almost entirely through him. One reader credits him as the mastermind behind saving Embry’s family, which keeps him useful rather than decorative.
Where it gives ground is in the romance’s shape and the villains’ depth. The blurb promises two women “falling hard and fast,” and that is exactly what readers report — one Goodreads reviewer calls it “one of the best insta-love books I have read,” which is a compliment that also tells you the relationship is not built slowly. At 151 pages, with two family plots, a company succession and a matchmaking scheme to run, there isn’t room for anything else. The stepmother and stepbrothers are one-note in the way fairy-tale villains usually are; readers who enjoy that call it campy, and the one reviewer who pushed back at all found Sapphire’s mother’s social-climbing subplot a distraction that deserved its own book.
The expectation to reset is the heat and the author’s reputation. Taylor is best known for erotic and dark urban fantasy butch/femme work, and one reader calls this a departure from her usual style. It is gentler: a sensual, open-door romance with love scenes, but readers describe “a little spice” rather than a steam-first book. If you know her from the Dominants of Eros books, calibrate; if her usual heat has kept you away, this is the place to start.
My honest note: A four-star concept with an unforgettable fairy godfather, told at novella speed with fairy-tale villains and a love story that arrives rather than grows. If you want your retellings subtle, this will feel broad. If you want a warm, funny evening where the butch gets the glass slipper, it delivers.
| Element | In Embers |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Embry Novak & Sapphire Keene — butch chef and femme incoming CEO, insta-love Cinderella pairing |
| Core tropes | Cinderella retelling, butch/femme, fairy godfather, evil stepmother, closeted heroine, workplace romance |
| Setting | A contemporary city — a toxic family home and the flagship store of an organic produce company |
| Heat level | 3/5 — open door, estimated from the author’s framing and reader reports |
| Series | Standalone novella — HEA, no cliffhanger |
| Content notes | Emotional abuse and manipulation by a stepparent, bullying by stepsiblings, grief and a parent’s past death from illness, homophobia and pressure to marry a man, a closeted heroine, sexual content |
How Spicy Is Embers?
A 3/5, and that number is my estimate rather than a database band. romance.io lists the book but has not assigned it a steam rating, which is common for titles with only a couple of ratings there. The author frames it as a “sensual” butch/femme fairy tale, one Amazon reviewer describes “just a little spice,” and another mentions the love scenes alongside the humour. That adds up to an open-door romance where the heat is part of the package rather than the point of it — which matters, because readers who know Taylor’s erotic titles may expect more.
Nothing in the reviews flags any particular kink or consent concern; the element worth knowing about is emotional rather than sexual, since the stepmother’s manipulation of a grieving father is the book’s darkest thread. No reviewer I found describes it as upsetting beyond that. For butch/femme romance at the same heat level, Get It Right and Tailor-Made sit in the same band.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you want a butch heroine cast as Cinderella, you enjoy a camp, meddling side character, you like your villains broad and your HEAs emphatic, and you want a comfort read you can finish in an evening.
You may want to skip it if: you need a relationship that builds slowly and believably, you find cartoonish villains grating, you’re expecting the heat level of the author’s erotic books, or you want a retelling that complicates the fairy tale rather than celebrating it.
In short: a sweet, funny, fairy-tale-shaped butch/femme novella that trades depth for delight — and knows it.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (September 2026)
This is a quiet book with a very happy readership. There is no viral moment behind it, no trade review, and no blog or review-site coverage that I could find; romance.io and StoryGraph each hold just two ratings. What it has is the author’s existing audience. Nine of the fourteen written Goodreads reviews date from the fortnight around its May 2024 release — one of them posted before the release date — and several reviewers refer to Taylor’s earlier work, which tells you most of these readers arrived already fans. That is not a criticism; it is context. A 4.52 average from 56 committed readers means something different from the same number across thousands of strangers. Since launch it has picked up a steady trickle of reviews into 2025, including one from a reader who had it on her wishlist for over a year. There is no audiobook edition: Amazon lists Kindle and paperback only, and Libro.fm does not stock it.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Marlow, first and loudest — “fairy godfather” is the phrase that appears in review after review, usually with a laugh attached. Second, the retelling itself: readers call it a fresh or “different” take on a story they know by heart, and they like that the butch heroine carries the Cinderella role. Third, the feeling it leaves: “warm,” “fun” and “happy” recur, and a reader quoted on the author’s release post calls it the happiest HEA they have read. Several readers also single out the two heroines’ family battles as giving the fluff some weight, and one says they laughed and cried in equal measure.
What readers argue about and complain about: Very little, which is itself the finding. There are no one-star ratings on Goodreads or Amazon, a single two-star on Goodreads, and 8% three-star on each platform. The criticisms that do exist are gentle. First: the pace of the romance. Readers don’t complain about it so much as name it — this is insta-love, and the praise for it is framed that way. Second: the sprawl. The most specific critical note, from a four-star Amazon reviewer, is that the subplot about Sapphire’s mother and her social ambitions pulls focus from the main story. Third: tone. The villains are broad by design, and one reader describes the whole thing as campy with a bit of weight — a fair summary that will read as praise to some and a warning to others. The only real split in the numbers is StoryGraph, where two reviewers average 3.5 — too few to call a trend, but the lone data point from outside the author’s core audience.
The standalone question worth asking first: Embers stands entirely alone. Embry and Sapphire’s story resolves in this book, and readers say the ending ties off the family plots, with one noting that two other deserving characters find love along the way. If it leaves you wanting more of Taylor, know that most of her catalogue runs darker and hotter. Coven, a butch/femme dark urban witch fantasy, averages 4.29 across 89 Goodreads ratings; Trust in Me, the first of her erotic Dominants of Eros books, sits at 4.12 across 161; and her most-rated title, Ice Quake, averages 4.19 across 226. None of them is a fairy tale, so choose by heat and genre rather than by author.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Embers a butch/femme romance?
Yes. It is marketed as a contemporary butch/femme Cinderella romance: Embry is the butch heroine and Sapphire the femme. The butch lead plays the Cinderella role, which is the book’s central twist.
How spicy is Embers?
About a 3/5. romance.io has not rated it, but the author calls it sensual and readers describe love scenes with “a little spice.” It is noticeably gentler than Tiffany E. Taylor’s erotic titles.
Does Embers have a happy ending?
Yes. Embry and Sapphire get a full fairy-tale HEA, the stepmother is defeated and one reader notes that two other characters find love too. There is no cliffhanger.
Is Embers part of a series?
No. It is a standalone novella of 151 pages in the Kindle edition. The paperback, published later in 2024, runs to 181 pages.
Is there an Embers audiobook?
Not that I could find. Amazon lists only Kindle and paperback editions, and Libro.fm does not stock an audio version.
If You Loved Embers, Read These Next
For another fairy-tale-shaped butch/femme romance with a society setting at the same heat level, Of Socialites and Prizefights is the closest match. If the short, tender butch/femme novella is what worked for you, Treasure by Rebekah Weatherspoon gives you the same one-evening length with a shy butch lead. And for a contemporary butch/femme novella with more real-world weight under the warmth, Get It Right is the next step.
For more in this register, browse our butch/femme lesbian romance guide or the full Book Reviews collection.
The Bottom Line
Embers sets out to give butch/femme readers their own Cinderella, and on its own terms it succeeds. The inversion is smart, Marlow is a delight, and the HEA is as complete as fairy tales promise. It is also an insta-love romance with villains drawn in a single stroke, a subplot or two more than 151 pages can comfortably hold, and a glowing average earned mostly from readers who already loved the author. If you want a warm, funny butch/femme retelling that asks nothing of you but an evening, it is worth it. Check Embers on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, Embers ranks as a charming small-press butch/femme fairy-tale novella — funny, warm and genuinely fresh in its casting, held back by insta-love and broad villains, and best approached for Marlow and the butch Cinderella rather than a slow-built romance.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ 4.52 average across 56 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ No one-star ratings on either platform
- ✓ Small launch-driven sample, no trade coverage
Romance ★★★★☆ 3.7/5
- ✓ Readers praise the couple’s chemistry
- ✓ Mutual protectiveness noted repeatedly
- ✓ Butch/femme dynamic central to the appeal
- ✓ Insta-love by design, not slow-built
Characters ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ Marlow the most-praised character
- ✓ Both heroines fight a parent for themselves
- ✓ Butch lead cast as Cinderella
- ✓ Stepfamily villains strictly one-note
Writing ★★★★☆ 3.6/5
- ✓ Humour lands for nearly every reviewer
- ✓ Easy, readable style readers praise
- ✓ Gentler register than the author’s usual
- ✓ Mother subplot flagged as distracting
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 3.7/5
- ✓ One reader laughed and cried throughout
- ✓ Hiding identity at home rings true
- ✓ Father’s rescue gives the plot stakes
- ✓ Camp villains keep the danger light
Heat Level ★★★☆☆ 3/5
- ✓ Author frames it as sensual
- ✓ Readers mention open-door love scenes
- ✓ “A little spice,” per one reader
- ✓ No romance.io steam rating yet
Ending ★★★★☆ 4.4/5
- ✓ Full fairy-tale HEA for the couple
- ✓ Stepmother defeated, father kept safe
- ✓ Two side characters find love too
- ✓ Neat to the point of predictable
Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ Comfort-read tone invites a return
- ✓ Marlow’s scenes reward a second pass
- ✓ 151 pages, one sitting
- ✓ No audiobook for a second format
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