The Princess Game: A Reimagining of Sleeping Beauty(Book Review)

 A princess is trapped in her own mind and the only way out is a true love’s kiss.

The Princess Game is a retelling of the classic fairy-tale Sleeping Beauty, a young adult fantasy the second last book of The Four Kingdoms series, which has 4 other books, a novelette, and two novellas. The world-building is beautiful, and the books can be read as standalone but there is a clear timeline, and the events are connected plus reading about old characters is always fun so I recommend reading it in order.

In this retelling of Sleeping Beauty the princess does not sleep her mind does, or so everyone thinks. In this retelling, the princess is trapped in her own mind and forced to act like a foolish maiden until a true love’s kiss frees her. She has started working from the shadows finding a way around her curse to protect her kingdom which is moving toward great danger, and she has to save it and herself, and for the latter true love is kind of necessary. Also, if she doesn’t comply with the curse’s terms she’ll die.

This is an interesting twist on sleeping beauty, it is worse and better at the same time, you are the most beautiful and intelligent girl until your 16th birthday, and after that boom, people think you are the most foolish person in the room and you have to play along or you’ll die additionally now the only reason people pay any attention to you is because of your beauty. But it is better than sleeping through life waiting for true love which may never come plus it makes a good interesting plot so I am all for it.

This one is the best in the series so far since I haven’t read the last book yet. The plot wasn’t good, it was great, the twists and turns, the climax was what made this one better for me, there was more tension this time in all the other books especially in the first one the climax didn’t feel like you are at the edge of your seat, but this one had me at the edge of mine the build-up was good, I didn’t feel like the story dragged at all nor could I think of any major plot hole. There was a scene where I felt my heart drop. This book went into suspense and thriller territory(a bit). 

Celeste, first of all, what a beautiful name. She is Rafe’s sister and we first met her in the 1st book. When the book started I was afraid we had a Mary Sue character on our hands, boy was I wrong. She had so many layers, and you see them one by one slowly. It was clear to me that her actions were influenced by her feelings regarding the curse but at the same time, I could see where she was coming from. This makes the final theme stronger, which I will come to later.

An absolute badass is how I would describe her, and her frustration of not being able to show what she was feeling and thinking is shown nicely, she had a hubris issue, which is unsurprising since she was blessed with intelligence and beauty by godmothers, but it only made the frustration more acute.

Also, I love the fact that she is an excellent fighter but is not a tomboy(she loves dresses and flowers). I for one don’t see it happening as often as I would like in books.

“A girl can wield a blade and a dress at the same
time, you know.” – Melanie Cellier, The Princess Game

William from The Princess Pact and The Midwinter’s Wedding is her love interest, the poor guy thought he was betraying Celeste, I would go more into it but I am trying to avoid spoilers. He was so confused and he confused Celeste but the slow burn was good, the final moment between them was butterflies in the stomach inducing. His character could have been better, I feel like some more depth was needed, some of the male characters in this series need some more fleshing out. 

The Villain took me by surprise, there isn’t really anything more to say.

Celine was my favorite character in the book, I want more of Celine, slightly annoying at first but she grew on me.

The theme according to me, was how we perceive people even if we don’t know much about them we reach conclusions based on assumptions. How dangerous half-baked information can be,  how sometimes we don’t really know what is in someone’s heart or mind even though we are near them. Also, what hatred, grief, and pain can do to a person, how it slowly affects and spreads until they do something they’ll regret. All this comes in the grey area, not black and white, grey.

A 13+ age rating for kissing and some violence, the book is about 240 pages with an epilogue, a prologue, and 33 chapters divided into three parts.

5 stars, the first one in this series, to sum up, more intense plot than the previous books, with good romance, interesting characters, beautiful theme. I see myself rereading it.

That is all for this post,

Yours,

A Fellow Bookworm