The Princess Blog

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...

Lost Starlight  by Kayla Eshbaugh is the newest book in the All That Glitters multi-author series of fairy tale retellings. This book is a retelling of Peter Pan  that veers drastically from the themes of its source material. The author put in her end notes that she wrote it because she wanted to see a version of Peter Pan  where Peter and Wendy get together. While this made for a lovely fantasy romance, it detracts from the character's essence as the boy who never grew up. Still, this is a charming and sweet book that only touches on the J. M. Barrie play. Lady Gwendolyn is a shy storyteller who enjoys reading books to children. One day, she is hired for an important job at the castle, where she becomes the official storyteller for Prince Peter. Peter is enamoured with her upon sight and looks forward to hearing her read to him each day. After spending enough time with her, he decides he wants her with him always. His desire to marry her is interrupted when she is kidn...

I'm not usually a big fan of "Peter Pan"  stories, but when I read the description for Hooked , I was, well, "hooked." This is the first book in a new series called Tales of Winberg by Annette K. Larsen . Though I was not previously familiar with her work, this story made me pretty curious about her other princess adventure tales. The series takes place in the same world as her previous series,  Books of Dalthia , which also contains a number of fairy tale retellings. This book is an excellent princess story that contains everything a great fairy tale should, but I would not necessarily recommend it to fans of Peter Pan  in particular, as it takes great liberties with its homage. Still, I have to give the author props for coming up with such a creative reimagining. Wendolyn spent most of her teenage years in hiding for fear that she would be discovered by the wicked captain her family tried to force her into marriage with. In order to hide her identity, she went...

The "Little Mermaid"  nerd in me could not resist reviewing another adaptation of my favorite fairy tale. The Siren Princess  is the second book in The Forgotten Kingdom series by Lichelle Slater . Its prequel,  The Dragon Princess , had very little to do with "Sleeping Beauty," so I wasn't too surprised to find that The Siren Princess  also had very little to do with the fairy tale it was based on. In fact, it had more in common with Peter Pan than it did with "The Little Mermaid" with a love interest who was none other than Captain Hook himself. This romantic version of Captain Hook was polite and heroic unlike Emma Swan's rough-around-the-edges beau from  Once Upon a Time . There were a lot of random name references to Disney's The Little Mermaid ,  J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan , and Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , but the characters' personalities bore no resemblance to the ones they were named after. Like its predecesso...