Mirabelle has no memory of her parents, who died in a fire shortly after she was born. As her godmothers prepare to celebrate her 16th birthday, the desire to visit her parents' graves overwhelms her, and she secretly boards a bus for Beau Rivage, the town of her birth.
Once there, she falls in with a set of very unusual characters. Blue, a boy her age with ferociously blue hair, tries to scare her off, while his older brother, Freddie, welcomes her and offers her a place to stay in their family's casino hotel. Their friend Viv, in the meantime, is constantly comparing her beauty with that of her stepmother, Regina. As Mira spends more time in Beau Rivage, she learns that teenagers born there—including herself—are each fated to live out the role of a character in a traditional fairy tale. Viv is Snow White, and her on-again, off-again boyfriend is the Huntsman—but what roles do the increasingly attractive Blue and Freddie have? And what about Mira herself? Could her role have anything to do with the odd rules her godmothers have enforced over the years, like their refusals to let her date or their prohibition against sharp objects?
Kill Me Softly focuses on Mira's quest for her own identity and her struggle to understand the sometimes incomprehensible world around her. She wants to make her own decisions, but how can she control her situation when every choice seems to be predetermined? The answers Mira finds are sure to satisfy readers seeking a contemporary retelling of fairy tales, a story with a strong female protagonist or a suspenseful romance.
