The Princess Blog

The Enchanted Crown  is the fourth and final book in The Stolen Kingdom series by Bethany Atazadeh . This is an excellent book for fans of any other book in the series. As a fan of The Stolen Kingdom  and The Jinni Key , I was happy to catch up with Arie and Rena for one last adventure. I was less impressed with The Cursed Hunter , but Nesrin was not featured enough to detract from my interest in this conclusion.  The Enchanted Crown  contains chapters from the perspectives of all three protagonists and several love interests, which keeps the story moving at a quick pace. The variety of perspectives creates a unique reading format since the story itself is a pretty traditional "final battle" narrative. I recently noticed that the subtitle for this book claims that it is a "Sleeping Beauty" retelling. That claim is a bit of a stretch, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the novel itself. The Enchanted Crown  is the exciting climax of Th...

Back in April, I was introduced to the enchanting world of Bethany Atazadeh's Stolen Kingdom series . The first two books, The Stolen Kingdom  and The Jinni Key , told the story of two princesses and their struggles to find love and save a kingdom. I eagerly awaited The Cursed Hunter , the third book in the series, in the hopes that it would continue the story and expand the world. When I finally got the opportunity to read it, it felt like it was from a completely different series that lacked the robust setting that was teased in the first two books. This book contains a simple story that feels dry and empty despite taking place in the same world. The expansive lore of Jinnis and Meremaids is replaced by a tale of a lone woman on a boring quest. I wish I could say this book was just as engaging and emotionally provocative as the first two, but I'm afraid  The Cursed Hunter  is a different beast entirely. Bethany Atazadeh is clearly a talented author, so I'm not sure...

I dove right into  The Jinni Key   after I completed  The Stolen Kingdom  by  Bethany Atazadeh . This book is an adaptation of "The Little Mermaid," but it doesn't work as a standalone story as well as other series adaptations  do. Instead of switching perspectives between the two new love interests, the book continues the story from Arie and Kadin's points of view from  The Stolen Kingdom  along with introducing us to Rena. As much as I liked this book, I would have loved to see some Gideon or Bosh chapters to offer more clarity and perspective on Rena's story. It also felt like Arie's story was dragged out into this book when it could have concluded in The Stolen Kingdom , but that's a minor gripe. I enjoyed The Jinni Key  even more than The Stolen Kingdom  overall since I'm a bigger fan of "The Little Mermaid" than "Aladdin." The Jinni Key  picks up right where The Stolen Kingdom  left off except that now we see the po...

The Stolen Kingdom  is a retelling of "Aladdin" by Bethany Atazadeh . It was recommended to me by one of my readers. Praising it can feel a little self-indulgent due to the many coincidental similarities it has to my own book, The Stolen Jewel . That said, I found the setting and story of The Stolen Kingdom very enjoyable overall. Even though it focuses on the princess from the tale, it is not a gender-bent "Aladdin" retelling like Lucy Tempest's Thief of Cahraman trilogy . It switches to the "Aladdin" character, whose name in this version was Kadin, later in the story. Similar to the Tangled novelizations , the character whose perspective you're reading from changes depending on the chapter. This can get a little jarring because their inner voices weren't all that different even thought their personalities were. I had to go back a few times to check which character was telling the story in that chapter. Aside from that minor nitpick, it is a...