The Princess Blog

Tainted Beauty  by Alesha Adamson is the first book in the All That Glitters series and the last book for me to complete after receiving ARCs of every other book before I got to it. Ending with the beginning, this series has now come full circle for me. Tainted Beauty is a combined retelling of "Beauty and the Beast" and "King Midas."  Both stories are blended together equally with no bias toward one or the other. It is a sweet romance with lots of magic and dragon lore. Among the All That Glitters series, this story shares the most similarities to  Rapunzel's Gambit  by Mary Mecham , but it still stands out as a unique and original dual fairy tale adaptation. Aurelius seeks the aid of a dragon to restore his family's fortune. The ability to turn anything he touched into gold sounded like a great idea at first, until he accidentally froze his own mother in a gilded prison, turning the blessing into a curse. Soon, he realized that he was a threat to anyo...

The Dark King and the Eternal Dance  is the second book I've read in  A Villain's Ever After , though it is not the second book in the series. I received an ARC copy from Camille Peters , who wrote the other book I read from this series, The Beast and the Enchantress . Camille supposedly encouraged Alesha Adamson to become an author and contribute to A Villain's Ever After, which is a very sweet thing to do for a friend. We could all use a good friend who encourages us to share our passions with the world as a true modern princess would. This book is based on "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," which is one of my favorite fairy tales, but one of my least favorite to read adaptations of . Most authors prefer to turn the tale into a horrific nightmare about siblings who are forced to go out each night and perform tasks against their will instead of an escapist fantasy about twelve sheltered princesses who sneak out to enjoy some freedom from the confines of their c...