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A review by smitchy
Undercover Princess by Connie Glynn
3.0
This had a lot of potential but I felt it never quite achieved it. The beginning was promising but the plot holes appeared thick and fast fairly early on. I expected something along the lines of The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot but this lacks the charm and the fun.
I was disappointed Ollie only appeared at the start and then disappeared for the rest of the book. Lottie is a bit too goody goody for my taste and never really gets fleshed out. Ellie is an archetype ´rebel without a cause’. Jamie could have been interesting but he is portrayed as so flat he could be a dinner plate.
Lottie is a scholarship girl who wants to be a princess (she seems to be stuck at mental age about 6 with the whole princess thing) in an AMAZING coincidence she made roomie with Ellie who is a real life princess !! Ellie resents the fuck out of being a princess and when a rumour starts that Lottie is the real princess both girls roll with it happily. It’s never quite explained how everyone seems to know this top secret information at the exclusive Rosewood Academy. Jamie turns up and he is Ellie’s ´trained from birth’ bodyguard ( those are exceedingly common and totally don’t contravene the Geneva convention on the rights of the child in the upper crust world apparently ). Suddenly Ellie and Jamie convince Lottie to take on the role of Ellie’s ´Portman’. Lottie accepts because , why not? A Portman is someone who pretends to be the royal in public so that the actual royal won’t be a target.
Throughout the book there are various vaguely threatening messages to Lottie and several incidents, a lot of red herrings, and a few plot points that just sort of peter off into nothing like Glynn just forgot about them. Apart from all of that there is the weird dynamic between Ellie and Lottie. They go from kinda disliking each other to being instant best friends to odd moments of intimacy that totally portray Ellie as a repressed lesbian. Nothing wrong with that in y’a lit but I feel like this is the wrong audience. As a bookshop worker the tone and writing in this book lend it to 9-12 year old audience. Most of whom are not really into the romance yet. Especially if they’re wanting ‘princess’ books. But the undertones of the story are more 13+ and quite frankly I don’t think it will appeal to many.
This is Connie Glynn's first book and she is apparently somewhat famous as a youtuber. I have a feeling this book is more one for the fans than for anyone else.
I was disappointed Ollie only appeared at the start and then disappeared for the rest of the book. Lottie is a bit too goody goody for my taste and never really gets fleshed out. Ellie is an archetype ´rebel without a cause’. Jamie could have been interesting but he is portrayed as so flat he could be a dinner plate.
Lottie is a scholarship girl who wants to be a princess (she seems to be stuck at mental age about 6 with the whole princess thing) in an AMAZING coincidence she made roomie with Ellie who is a real life princess !! Ellie resents the fuck out of being a princess and when a rumour starts that Lottie is the real princess both girls roll with it happily. It’s never quite explained how everyone seems to know this top secret information at the exclusive Rosewood Academy. Jamie turns up and he is Ellie’s ´trained from birth’ bodyguard ( those are exceedingly common and totally don’t contravene the Geneva convention on the rights of the child in the upper crust world apparently ). Suddenly Ellie and Jamie convince Lottie to take on the role of Ellie’s ´Portman’. Lottie accepts because , why not? A Portman is someone who pretends to be the royal in public so that the actual royal won’t be a target.
Throughout the book there are various vaguely threatening messages to Lottie and several incidents, a lot of red herrings, and a few plot points that just sort of peter off into nothing like Glynn just forgot about them. Apart from all of that there is the weird dynamic between Ellie and Lottie. They go from kinda disliking each other to being instant best friends to odd moments of intimacy that totally portray Ellie as a repressed lesbian. Nothing wrong with that in y’a lit but I feel like this is the wrong audience. As a bookshop worker the tone and writing in this book lend it to 9-12 year old audience. Most of whom are not really into the romance yet. Especially if they’re wanting ‘princess’ books. But the undertones of the story are more 13+ and quite frankly I don’t think it will appeal to many.
This is Connie Glynn's first book and she is apparently somewhat famous as a youtuber. I have a feeling this book is more one for the fans than for anyone else.