The Princess Blog

Falling for the Trickster  by Lucy Tempest was the seventh or eighth ARC I received from To Win a Dark Heart , a multi-author series of villainous fairy tale retellings. When I realized it was the first in the series and released this weekend, I bumped it up on my list. This is the perfect book to kick off the series since it directly follows the premise of combining two fairy tales and bringing two villains together without overcomplicating it by adding  additional layers . The book is a retelling of "Rumpelstiltskin" and "The Goose Girl" with a heavier focus on "Rumpelstiltskin." It is a swoony fairy tale romance with relatable characters that takes place in a whimsical world of humans and fae . Ottoline was frustrated by her life of servitude to the spoiled Princess Gertrude, who mistreated her so badly that a fae noble took pity on her. Roderick granted Ottoline the power to impersonate Princess Gertrude just in time to meet her betrothed, a prince ...

Among the ARCs I've read so far in To Win a Dark Heart , Falling for the Pirate  by Nicki Chapelway was the most surprising. This book subverted all my expectations of this multi-author series of dual villainous fairy tale retellings and gave me something I rarely see in this genre. It reads like a modern isekai show , in which the protagonists are regular people who are reborn as fictitious characters in a story they are somewhat familiar with. In this case, it happens to be a story that one of them wrote. This is a plot frequently used in anime, most recently with last season's The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess , but I don't see it as often in fairy tale retellings , and especially wasn't expecting it from this series, which already contains several unique features. Vera is a struggling screenwriter who just sold an edgy version of "The Little Mermaid"  that crosses over with Peter Pan  in the trend-setting style of  Once Upon a Time . Vera...

After the massive Snow White  debacle , Disney was said to have put their future live-action remakes on hold , particularly one they were planning of the 2010 animated classic, Tangled . That plan didn't last long. It was only a few short months later that casting for the film began. Earlier this week, the official announcement was made  that the auditions were complete, and Teagan Croft  and Milo Manheim  were selected to play Rapunzel and Flynn Rider/Eugene, respectively. These two actors certainly resemble their animated counterparts and are safer choices than the diversity castings for The Little Mermaid   and Snow White , which resulted in much controversy despite both actresses giving the roles their all. Still, should this movie even be made ? I get it. Sixteen years is long enough for a child to become an adult, and yet the animated version of Tangled  still feels fresh in recent memory. Maybe it's because it never really faded away, being heavily...

Disney Jr. has been sharing sporadic updates on their social media  to remind us that the upcoming Sofia the First sequel series, Royal Magic , is set to debut later this year. The frustrating part is that they are keeping the project very much under wraps, avoiding any artwork, plot, or production details, and focusing instead on nostalgic clips of the original show. This makes fans hungry for more information, causing them to turn to less reliable sources for any nugget of hype they can find. The Disney fan insiders delivered these coveted nuggets with The Disney Scope: Magic at a Glance , a Discord panel, which revealed some early leaks of Sofia's new design, along with potential new character and plot information about the upcoming show. Since this is not an official press release, all of this information should be taken with a grain of salt, much like the Mexican Sleeping Beauty project . Sofia fans had a lot to say about this first look at the sequel series redesign shared o...

I have now received ARCs for just about every book in To Win a Dark Heart , a multi-author series of villainous fairy tale retellings. Among the ones I've read so far, Falling for the Mad King  by Sydney Winward is my favorite. This book does an excellent job of bringing two troubled souls together to improve each other's lives for the better with a touch of whimsy and magic. The book combines Alice in Wonderland  with "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," two stories that often lack clearly defined villains, allowing the author to create her own protagonists. Parts of it resembled Once Upon a Time in Wonderland , one of my favorite romantic TV shows of all time, but it is very much an original story. Falling for the Mad King  takes place primarily in Wonderland and introduces a villainous incarnation of Alice. The book follows the story of Rylan, the Mad King, an original character whose personality is a mix between the Mad Hatter and Queen of Hearts, leaning more towa...