The Princess Blog

Before she started the inspired Singer Tales series , Deborah Grace White had another series of fairy tale retellings called The Kingdom Tales . This series took some time to find its voice, but I think it found it with Kingdom of Slumber , a retelling of "Sleeping Beauty" with a twist. In this interpretation of the often-retold tale , the princess is cursed to fall into an enchanted sleep during the day, while the rest of the kingdom sleeps all night without ever knowing that she is awake. In addition to its creative twist, the book boasts a beautiful romance and a guest appearance from the dragon Rekavidur, who travels across each Kingdom Tales book as well as Deborah Grace White's original mermaid series, The Vazula Chronicles . Up to this point, I hadn't enjoyed the Kingdom Tales as much as her newer Singer Tales , but this book had a certain something missing from others I've read so far. Like many princesses before her , Princess Azalea was born into a mar...

Kingdom of Cinders  is a "Cinderella"  retelling from Deborah Grace White's Kingdom Tales which had been on my reading list for a while. I read the first book in this series  but wasn't as impressed with it as her original fantasy books including the Vazula Chronicles and the Kyona Legacy . I have been thoroughly enjoying her newer fairy tale series, The Singer Tales , which incorporates even more original lore into these beloved tales. While this book does focus a lot on the popular fairy tale, there are some key differences that make it unique. For instance, it takes place in a kingdom where magic is illegal with a protagonist who must hide her powers from the crown. I couldn't help noticing how similar these elements were to my own original princess trilogy  which also includes a "Cinderella" retelling , but I will try to leave any personal bias out of this review. Penny never asked to be born with magic, nor did she want it. In fact, she was so ash...

It's hard to get back into the fairy tale retelling grind after completing such a great original fantasy series . Some fairy tale retellings are unique, while others stick pretty closely to the original story. Kingdom of Beauty  by Deborah Grace White  fell somewhere in the middle. It was just similar enough to the original  "Beauty and the Beast"  that it suffered from a case of sameness after so many other retellings . That is not to say that it was bad or poorly written. In fact, it was quite good for the first book in a new series of fairy tale retellings . It's just very vanilla. Kingdom of Beauty  is about a girl named Felicity who lives with her eccentric father and brother, Ambrose. Ambrose is friends with a bully who forces his affections on Felicity no matter how much she rejects him. Though his name is Kurt, he is such a cookie-cutter archetype that it might as well have been Gaston. Every other chapter in the book switches to the perspective of Jus...