Review: Royal Wedding by Meg Cabot

Royal Wedding (The Princess Diaries #11) by Meg Cabot
Publisher: Macmillan
Released: July 2nd 2015
My Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5
Find it on Goodreads

Royal Wedding follows Princess Mia and her Prince Charming as they plan their fairy tale wedding - but a few poisoned apples could turn this happily-ever-after into a royal nightmare.

For Princess Mia, the past five years since college graduation have been a whirlwind of activity, what with living in New York City, running her new teen community centre, being madly in love, and attending royal engagements. And speaking of engagements, Mia's gorgeous longtime boyfriend Michael managed to clear both their schedules just long enough for an exotic (and very private) Caribbean island interlude where he popped the question! Of course Mia didn't need to consult her diary to know that her answer was a royal oui.

But now Mia has a scandal of majestic proportions to contend with: Her grandmother's leaked "fake" wedding plans to the press that could cause even normally calm Michael to become a runaway groom. Worse, a scheming politico is trying to force Mia's father from the throne, all because of a royal secret that could leave Genovia without a monarch. Can Mia prove to everyone - especially herself - that she's not only ready to wed, but ready to rule as well? (from Goodreads)

I loved Royal Wedding. It was so cute, so adorable and literally everything I wanted from Mia as an adult. I was actually really nervous that I wouldn’t enjoy this book. I reread books 9 and 10 of the original The Princess Diaries series before starting this (didn’t have time for a full reread) to remind myself of everything that happened and how it all ended, so I was feeling kind of nostalgic and wasn’t sure that the new book with older characters could be as good as the original series. I had no idea what adult Mia would be like or what sort of problems she would be experiencing in Royal Wedding, but I can tell you now, I was worried for no reason.

Mia’s voice was the same as it had always been. Obviously she had matured, and was a little less panicky and awkward than she was as a teenager, but her fundamental personality was the same and I loved loved loved how that came across in the book. You could tell it was still Mia, and I was so happy she hadn’t morphed into a completely different person. She stilled bickered with Grandmère, she still made impulsive decisions at times, she was still very in love with Michael and it was so great to see all the characters I loved again! I really had missed them. Mia and Michael were so cute together, and even with the press hounding them, and the difficulties that came with getting married and all the other unexpected events they encountered along the way, you could tell that they truly cared about each other, and nothing would get in the way of that. I also loved seeing characters like Tina and Lily again (though I would have liked more Lana, because I always found her kind of hilarious). Grandmère was as bossy and interfering as ever (the scenes where she kept telling Mia to uninvite people to the wedding cracked me up), and Phillipe…well. He was a bit useless, wasn’t he? I mean, another child who didn’t know she was a princess? REALLY? How could he not tell his family? It would have been different if he hadn’t known that she existed, but he did! I don’t think his decision to keep it a secret was really excusable (Mia never got to know her own sister!), but maybe that’s just me. At least he had some contact with her, I suppose.

I did love the character of Olivia Grace (the secret daughter) though. She was sweet and quite different to Mia in personality (though they did share some traits). I liked that Mia tried to do her best by Olivia when she found out about her, and took the time to get to know her. It was nice to see them spend time together as sisters and I am now pretty intrigued to read about Olivia’s account of everything that happened in her spin-off series! I hope to see more of Olivia from Mia’s point of view as well though, in future books, and I hope they can become closer.

Plot-wise, I really enjoyed everything that happened and how Mia dealt with the various issues that came her way. The return of JP kind of surprised me - the nerve of that guy! Who did he think he was, seriously? He annoyed me so much, I’m glad Mia wasn’t putting up with it. I also thought the revelation towards the end, while a surprise to many characters, was actually kind of funny, just because of the way it had been hinted at throughout the book for the readers. I am definitely hoping for a sequel soon - I can’t wait to see what Mia does next!

Overall, Royal Wedding was a lot of fun, and an excellent addition to a series I have loved since I was a young teen! It was great growing up with these books, and I find it so awesome that I now get to read the adult series as an adult myself! Highly recommended.

Read More

The Princess Diaries - New Covers and Series Appreciation

You may or may not know that I am a huge The Princess Diaries fan. Huge. The Princess Diaries was one of the first YA books I ever read and it's pretty much the reason why I now have a massive collection of YA and can't stop buying more books. To celebrate the series' 15th birthday (I feel so old) and the release of the new middle-grade spin off series AND the new adult The Princess Diaries book, Royal Wedding (which I am very excited to read - review coming soon), Macmillan has redesigned all the covers of the series, so I thought I'd do a side by side comparison and share it with you all!

I apologise for my photography - I have as much skill as a llama on wheels

So here you can see the new cover of book one (left) and the old covers for the entire series. I have to say, the old covers will always have a place in my heart, but I do really like the new ones too! I only have the first book in the new cover so far, but here's what they look like together:

Image courtesy of Macmillan

Aren't they pretty? I love the colours, and the faces the model makes on each book. Mia has always been a bit awkward so I think having awkward faces on the covers is brilliant and lets you know that the book is going to be funny (these books are hilarious - if you have not read them, I can't even tell you how much you're missing out). It looks like the books have been renamed too, and I think the new titles match the actual content of each book a bit more (though the old ones made it really easy to know which number book in the series you were reading). The new covers of books 1-3 are out July 2nd, and the new covers of books 4-5 are out August 27th. To find out more, and to see the rest of the new covers, click here.

Here's a direct comparison of the first books (ignore the "only 99p" mark on the old cover. There's a story about that - and about how I first came to love The Princess Diaries series - which you can read here). Very different, but honestly, I adore both. My old cover is very well loved (you can't see the pages but if you could, you'd be able to tell I've read that book many, many times) and the gold is a bit scratched up from when it's been taken off the shelf and reshelved lots of time. I think the old cover is still appealing - great font, a crown on the front, nice colour scheme - but the new one is a bit more modern and will appeal to younger people today more than the old cover. It's also more representative of what actually happens in the book - Mia's surprise at learning she's a princess (whereas the old cover just has a bunch of bottles of random cosmetics on it - and while I still love it, it's doesn't really tell you much).

Here's my entire collection! Ahh it's making me feel nostalgic. I remember waiting for books 9 and 10 to be released (on the right). I'm still pretty annoyed they're not the same size as the rest of my books as well, but I've learnt to live with it! :P. I feel a reread of this series coming on soon... And if you're wondering what those books at the top of the photo are, well, see below:

When I said I was a huge fan, I meant it. The four books at the bottom are novellas that were never released in the UK, so I bought the US editions. And the the large book at the top is a yearbook (from 2008!) that I *think* my mum may have bought for me (honestly, I can't remember, though it'd be fitting if she did, as she bought me the first TPD book and is why I got hooked on the series). I even had that flowery background as my wallpaper on my phone for years (it was a freebie from Meg Cabot's website if I remember correctly) and I used to constantly browse the Meg Cabot Message Boards as well. I was a little bit obsessed, if truth be told.

Now, I'm an adult (just about), and while I haven't read these books in a while, I still look back on them fondly, and I'm pretty sure that when I do eventually read them again, I will love them as much as I always did. So I'm sharing my collection with you, and hopefully you will be as excited as I am for these new covers, and the two new series that have just been released! My review of Royal Wedding should be coming soon, so keep an eye out for that if you're interested.

I hope you enjoyed this post, and please please please, if you've never read The Princess Diaries series before, pick it up. It's so fun and hilarious and a perfect set of books to read in the summer.

(P.S. If you're really old school, you may remember the old old covers of TPD series that looked like this:

Image from Amazon UK

I never had these covers, but remember seeing them in the library. They were redesigned to the gold crown style before the series was finished though - so I'm sort of glad I never had these ones, even though they're really cute, because the later books in the series wouldn't have matched the earlier books at all and that would have been a travesty.)

Read More