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A review by llamallamacallurmama
How to Find a Princess by Alyssa Cole
3.75
**Most of my reviews contain detailed Content Notes (including CW/TW) sections, which may include spoilers and general tags. I have tried to mark them appropriately, but please use caution.**
3.75
Audio (Karen Chilton)
* Summary: Long tired of her mother’s obsession with their supposed royal lineage, out of a job and girlfriend, and struggling with her compulsion to people please, Makeda has returned to her grandmother’s B and B when Bez - the chaotic royal investigator in moderate disgrace - arrives and sets Makeda’s life on its ear.
* Stats: CR (slight AU), FF, open door, part of a series but can stand alone
* Notes: I think my enjoyment of books recently has been really impacted by a personal funk and a reading slump alongside it, so I think I enjoyed this a little bit less than I might have another time. I thought overall, it was sweet but a little slow, and I just didn’t really connect with either character (which is interesting because I am 100% a Fixer - though not as profoundly as Makeda) or totally understand why the two were “the perfect match”. I get why they might be - and buy it - but I just didn’t see it play out enough on the page. Some of this is likely due to the story not having an epilogue which is always tricky for me. I like epilogues. They help me *believe*. I think Makeda did make strides in understanding how/why she is/has been a pleaser and how that has hurt her and her relationships in the past. But I worry that she hasn’t really gotten to the point where I feel like she knows how to be happy without that. What’s she going to do now? She mentions having a few plans… but what are they? I thought the mixing of the real world and real world issues with the “AU” was interesting but that it got a little carried away with itself later in the story. I assume all of that fits in somewhere else in the author’s bibliography and might work better in that deeper context. I also thought it was interesting that this book is blurbed as Anastasia inspired - I was expecting something a little darker. If I was blurbing it and needed a cultural reference, I guess I’d go more Princess Diaries than Anastasia? I’ve not ever seen the Disney Anastasia though, so it has historical revolution, death and fraud vibes to me rather than love story with a discovered royal identity.
OTT and Spoilery Content Notes: