Book Review: The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot

My Rating: ★★★☆☆

Genre: Young Adult

Plot: Mia Thermopolis is a dork. Awkwardly tall, flat chest, crazy hair, weird mom. She's not popular. As if that wasn't enough for her to deal with as a teenager, she finds out her dad is a prince-- which means she's the their to his throne. In the first book of The Princess Diaries series, Mia keeps a journal as she adjusts to her new life-- sudden media attention, princess lessons with her grandmere, and attention to boys who didn't know she even existed two weeks ago.

Pros:

• I love, love, love journal-entry books.
• Mia is written as a totally believable teenage character.
• This book was so funny!
• I read it in, like, six hours.
• Mia's dad is alive in the books.

Cons:

• (Please don't hate me for saying this) I liked the movie better. I know, I know! It's actually very rare for me to say this! I think it's maybe because The Princess Diaries is one of my favorite movies, but I kept trying to compare the book to the movie and that's not fair to the book.
• I kept waiting for the book to end.
• It ended really abruptly.

Favorite Quotes: 

• “Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgement that something is more important than fear; The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all.” 
• “You know in sixth grade, when they made all of us girls go into this other room and watch a video about getting our periods and stuff? I bet while we were gone, the boys were watching a video about how to look at each other in that infuriating way.” 

My Thoughts: Like I said, I liked the movie better. I know they're two separate things, and the plots are hardly comparable, but I couldn't help myself. This series was ~just ok~, and I think I would have enjoyed it if I was a little younger. I may attempt to read the rest of the series someday, but I'm not going to go out of my way for it.

Links:
Goodreads
Amazon
B&N
Book Depository
Meg Cabot