This book hit my sweet spot in all the right ways.
I especially loved the way romance builds between Annie and Liam despite their opposite roles in society. The way the novel arrives at its conclusion was completely satisfactory. There’s even a fairy tale role for Annie, which I didn’t see coming, but was delighted about. Along the way, she encounters a mish-mash of fairy tale encounters such as Hansel and Gretel as cleverly thrown together as something out of Stephen Sondheim’s epic musical Into the Woods or the Shrek movies. Liam joins Annie on her journey to gather up princes in an attempt to find her sister’s True Love. He gets all shame-faced about it, but Annie could care less. One thing that hooked me early on was the way Annie saves Liam ( one of the unaffected guards who was away from the palace when the curse set in). I hate how fairy tales can fall into tropes where the prince is always the one to save the day and rescue the powerless maiden. The Wide-Awake Princess is her story, and deservedly so-Annie is one kick-ass heroine! When Gwendolyn pricks her finger and sends her kingdom into one hundred years of sleep, Annie is the only one unaffected. Not wanting another cursed princess, the King and Queen ask one fairy to gift Annie when she is born, making it so that no magic (good or bad) can ever harm her. As babies, Gwendolyn was cursed, destined to prick her finger on a spinning wheel upon turning sixteen. The novel revolves around Princess Annie, the younger sister of Crown Princess Gwendolyn. I think it’s my favorite book yet by Baker, who wrote the Tales of the Frog Princess series (the first novel was the inspiration for Disney’s The Princess and the Frog).
With all this talk lately regarding the merits of fractured fairy tales, sometimes it’s nice to just sit back and enjoy a sugar-spun story. and perhaps even find a true love of her own. She must find Gwen's true love to kiss her awake.īut who is her true love? The irritating Digby? The happy-go-lucky Prince Andreas, who is holding a contest to find his bride? The conniving Clarence, whose sinister motives couldn't possibly spell true love? Joined by one of her father's guards, Liam, who happened to be out of the castle when the sleeping spell struck, Annie travels through a fairy tale land populated with characters both familiar and new as she tries to fix her sister and her family. When Gwennie pricks her finger and the whole castle falls asleep, only Annie is awake, and only Annie-blessed (or cursed?) with being impervious to magic-can venture out beyond the rose-covered hedge for help. In this new stand-alone fairy tale, Princess Annie is the younger sister to Gwen, the princess destined to be Sleeping Beauty.
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