2.5 Stars

A simple and sweet fairy tale retelling. I like the slightly feminist makeover but sadly it ultimately still felt like the Prince got the girl. Our heroine was undoubtedly smart and courageous and the warmth of her character oozed off the page. I prefer a bit of attitude in my heroines but I still appreciated Alyssa. An enjoyable read. ( )

Melanie Cellier always seems to have fascinating ideas for her stories. This one is about how a total outsider winds up getting drawn into the royal circle, initially by a misunderstanding, but later by the force of her character. I have to say that I think the idea was great but the implementation was weaker than it could have been.

A girl running through the woods gets separated from her company and seeks shelter at a castle, and through a misunderstanding she becomes the tutor of several young princesses. But she's a girl who has a lot of interesting ideas and the royal family starts depending on her more and more, and eventually she saves them from a terrible plot by a sinister princess of a neighboring kingdom.

(Interestingly enough, that sinister princess of the neighboring kingdom has her own story, where she turns into something more worthwhile, in the next volume of this series. I like it when an author can take the villain from one story and make her the heroine of the next. I think it really says something about an author when they can pull off a repentance/redemption story; the good and evil are not so simplistic.)

I think this story has the strengths and weaknesses that are typical of the fairy-tale-retelling genre (at least the clean retellings). Strengths: (a) charming characters. Weaknesses: (a) political naivete. No, politics don't work like that. (b) what's in it for the guys? I'm still scratching my head, trying to understand why the prince would feel that way. But, since these stories tend to be told exclusively from the female perspective, I guess an unworldly, impossible prince doesn't harm the story much.

I liked the idea, and the story came out ok. Among the genre of fairy-tale retellings, this is among the better. (It's not my favorite genre, I only stumbled into it because I ran out of other things to read, so I know I'm not the intended audience, and I am perhaps more critical than those who can't get enough of fairy tales.) Of Cellier's Four Kingdoms and Beyond the Four Kingdoms series, I think this one, #4 (The Princess Game), and #5 (the Princess Search) are the best. Pretty much all the books in the series have the same strengths and weaknesses: great ideas, but the writing isn't up to the same standard. I am surprised at the breadth of her ideas--none of the books feel like repetitions of each other, and they are different enough from the base fairy tale to count as completely independent stories. This is not true of many other fairy tale retellings. ( )

An engrossing retelling of The Princess and the Pea. I enjoyed it! ( )