Book Review: Royal Wedding

 

    Growing up, the Princess Diaries series was like a comforting, cozy hug, which saw me all throughout my pre-teen and teenage years. Mia was my neurotic best friend, who obsessed over 90's TV shows, as well as navigating growing up and becoming an adult and having no clue what that should look like. Fast forward many years, and 6 years after the last book was published, Meg Cabot surprises her now adult fans with a sequel to her series - and I, for one, cannot be happier. 

   Royal Wedding is the 11th book in the series, and it fills that ever-present hole in my heart for the musings of Mia in her diary. Now an adult, this book follows Mia and Michael's journey to the altar, as well as the discovery of a secret little sister who gets to find out she is also a princess! In my opinion, Cabot has done an excellent job showing Mia as an adult - grown up, sure, but still the same teenager we fell in love with. The story is filled with connections and references to the original series, and the plot is twisty enough to make you really believe that this really is real life. Without giving away any spoilers, the involvement of Lilly with a certain bodyguard hit home for me that Mia and her friends are no longer in high school, but are fully grown women and I appreciated that Cabot did not shy away from growing up her characters. What we are left with is a wonderfully written story which is the perfect escape for my grown up inner middle-schooler. 

Recommended for people who enjoy: diary-style books, the Princess Diaries, royalty, wedding planning, contemporary fiction. 

Rating: 4.5/5

Book Information

Title: Royal Wedding (The Princess Diaries #11)

Author: Meg Cabot

Published: January 1st, 2015

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks

Format: Paperback

Pages: 448 

Summary:

For Princess Mia, the past five years since college graduation have been a whirlwind of activity, what with living in New York City, running her new teen community center, being madly in love, and attending royal engagements. And speaking of engagements. Mia’s gorgeous longtime boyfriend Michael managed to clear both their schedules just long enough for an exotic (and very private) Caribbean island interlude where he popped the question! Of course Mia didn’t need to consult her diary to know that her answer was a royal oui.

But now Mia has a scandal of majestic proportions to contend with: Her grandmother’s leaked “fake” wedding plans to the press that could cause even normally calm Michael to become a runaway groom. Worse, a scheming politico is trying to force Mia’s father from the throne, all because of a royal secret that could leave Genovia without a monarch.  Can Mia prove to everyone—especially herself—that she’s not only ready to wed, but ready to rule as well?

Let us know what you thought!

Happy Reading, 

Mari

Book Review: The Castaway and the Witch by Ionna Papadopoulou

Just in time for summer's transition into fall comes this haunting fairytale! Releasing September 23rd, 2025. Thank you to NetGalley for early access!

 

All Nefele knows is life on the island. Orphaned there as a young girl, she grows up alone with only the island's mysterious elks and a tower full of old diaries to guide her. She knows the island is shaping her into the legendary witch, cursed to remain imprisoned there for eternity. But just when Nefele has accepted the future, the arrival of a mysterious sailor throws everything she thought she knew off balance.

 

The Castaway and the Witch by Ionna Papadopoulou has all the trappings of a fairytale: morals and metaphors to chew on, magic shaped by wishes, and characters who are meant to learn their lesson. The world and characters of the book are beautiful and lush. Nefele is complex, torn between living the life prescribed by the island and the one she really wants. Her journey over the course of the book feels real, and I think readers will be able to empathize with the feeling of being stuck in cycles that feel pre-written whether for comfort or out of fear. In the acknowledgement, Papadopoulou writes that some of the characters in the book reflect her own desires to escape into lives that seem simpler or preordained instead of the difficult reality we wake up to each morning. The book really grapples with that, and with what it means to choose the difficult path anyway.

 

However, despite the strong worldbuilding, characters, and plot... the book felt like a bit of a drag. No matter how concentrated I was on what was happening on the page, each paragraph seemed to slip out of my focus and I'd have to reread some passages three or four times to make sense of them. This was especially prevalent around the big or magically charged moments of the book. Time also passed oddly in the book, which was understandable, as the book covers a span of about nine years if not more, but which added to the confusion. As a result, the book's 162 pages feel a lot longer. I'd like to imagine that all these elements were used purposefully, to add to the very personal and confusing (or "cerebral" as the author called it) journey that Nefele goes on, but they also made the plot harder to follow, and difficult to pick up once I'd lost the thread.

 

Still, I think that the book is worth checking out if you're following the trend of myth and fairytale retellings that is taking over book review spaces. The tropical and treacherous landscape of the book is also a perfect transitional read for this period between summer and fall, providing just enough of both soft summery vibes and frankly gruesome scenes to walk that line easily. And outside of the occasionally clunky or confusing writing, Papadopoulou's big ideas shine, and readers will definitely come away thinking about the morals and messages she explores throughout the novel.

 

Read this if you liked: The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, anything by Gail Carson Levine, One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig

 

Thanks for reading!

See you next time,

Aleks

 

Book Information

Title: The Castaway and the Witch

Author: Ionna Papadopoulou

Published: 23 September, 2025

Publisher: Ghost Orchid Press

Format: digital, reviewed through NetGalley

Pages: 162