A Royal Quest by Melody Carlson
Clean Middle Grade/YA Royal
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A Royal Quest (The Princess Wars #1) by Melody Carlson
3.5 STARS, Clean Middle Grade/YA Princess, My format: paperback
Goodreads Synopsis | Buy on BookShop
Princess Heather was born just before her twin Rose and is the rightful heir to the crown, but she wants to go on one last adventure before that happens.
Personal Review:
I was underwhelmed by this book. The story is great, the premise is promising, but the execution left me wanting.
First of all, there were several missing words and typos that seriously should have been caught. I know one or two occasionally slip through, but I had to re-read several sentences/paragraphs to figure out what was being said only to realize a wrong word was used and that's why it didn't make sense.
Secondly, the characters felt very inconsistent to me. Heather, for example, is supposed to be a brave head-strong girl who we are to believe has the ability to disguise herself as a boy, only to giggle like crazy and dance around her room when she is putting on her boy clothes. It just didn't mesh. Sir Edwards is supposed to be a guard, a father-like figure, but at one point he "cries like a baby". He could experience deep sorrow or grief, or let the tears of anguish fall maybe, but there is no way I could imagine him crying like a baby of all things.
Lastly, there were a couple of plot holes that I just felt meh about. One character knew information that I couldn't figure out how it was possible that he knew, because the events didn't happen in that order. And because some of the character stories were overlapping, it was actually quite difficult to keep up with where we were in the timeline since it didn't seem to be linear.
The one big saving grace about this book is that it is truly clean. I would feel comfortable handing this to my 7 and 9 year old girls because the violence is not very descriptive and the couple kisses are not described in any detail.
Editing to add that I really didn't like the way Heather often said that a person was good-looking/nice/pretty "for a commoner". I couldn't understand why the commoners were assumed to be ugly, rude, and dirty. And Heather was supposed to be the humble sister, so this bothered me.
Content Warnings:
kidnapping, threats, girl disguised as boy