The Princess Diaries Book Club #2: Princess in the Spotlight

10:03 Cilla 0 Comments



The Princess Diaries (#2): Princess in the Spotlight

No one ever said being a princess was easy.

Just when Mia thought she had the whole princess thing under control, things get out of hand, fast. First there's an unexpected announcement from her mother. Then Grandmère arranges a national primetime interview for the brand-new crown princess of Genovia. On top of that, intriguing, exasperating letters from a secret admirer begin to arrive.

This was a fun read, and just as with the first novel, I blew through it in a matter of hours. However, there were some things about the book and myself as a reader that I came to realise while reading this. For some of them, I'm still deciding whether they are good or bad things.

  • The first thing I take issue with is the continuity problem with Mia's claim that she's been in love with Michael for ages. Umm, did we not just spend all of the first book with her all starry-eyed at Josh Richter? Also, didn't she suspect that Michael had a crush on her in the last chapter? She spent all of this book obsessing about whether Michael is her secret admirer, and never brought up the fact that he wrote a song about a tall girl who didn't realise someone liked her. Did I forget something here??
  • I adored the plotline about Mia's mum and Mr. Gianini's wedding. I look forward to seeing Mia deal with yet another change in the family dynamic, and more of Mr. Gianini. 
  • We got to see a different side of Mia's father here, which I loved. Apparently, he's not just a womanising prince and a detached father. Who knew?
  • "And everyone knows that lately being an Asian is pretty cool." My copy is the Indonesian translation, so I don't know if this is the original line in English. In any case, this line bothered me. Did Mia mean it wasn't cool before? Why?
  • It seemed slightly ignorant to me that Mia kept insisting to Boris that it's 'un-American' to tuck sweaters into trousers. Maybe it was just his personal style and nothing to do with his not being American?
  • I mentioned in my previous re-read that Princess Diaries has a good range of diverse characters, and that's awesome. It made me aware of the fact that I did not notice that diversity when I was eleven; in my mind, they were all white, even Tina Hakim Baba and Ling Su. It's embarrassing to think about, but I also hope it means I've grown up since then. I do hope we get to see more of them though. Also, I'm going to keep an eye out for POC in the popular kids' group, because so far all of them seems to be part of Mia's 'freaks and geeks' group. Though I could simply have missed something.
Overall my rating of this one is: ⋆⋆⋆

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