The Princess Diaries #1 The Princess Diaries Meg Cabot

Posted June 4, 2024 by jrsbookr in Uncategorized / 0 Comments

by Meg cabot
The Princess Diaries #1 The Princess Diaries  Meg CabotThe Princess Diaries Series: Princess diaries #1
Published by Harper Collins on October 13, 2009
Genres: Young Adult Fiction / Coming of Age, Young Adult Fiction / Epistolary (Letters & Diaries), Young Adult Fiction / Fairy Tales & Folklore / General, Young Adult Fiction / Family / Multigenerational, Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy / Contemporary, Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy / Romance, YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Girls & Women, Young Adult Fiction / Romance / Contemporary, Young Adult Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy, Young Adult Fiction / Royalty
Pages: 320
Find the Author: Website, Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon, Instagram
Goodreads

The first book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Princess Diaries series by Meg Cabot.

Mia Thermopolis is pretty sure there’s nothing worse than being a five-foot-nine, flat-chested freshman, who also happens to be flunking Algebra. Is she ever in for a surprise.

First Mom announces that she’s dating Mia’s Algebra teacher. Then Dad has to go and reveal that he is the crown prince of Genovia. And guess who still doesn’t have a date for the Cultural Diversity Dance?

The Princess Diaries is the first book in the beloved, bestselling series that inspired the feature film starring Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews.

Reading Challenges: Beat the backlist

Review:

Essentially, what saves this book from being just another YA journal-style teenage girl drama-filled mess is Mia’s liveliness, her spirit, her humor, and her. She’s a fantastic protagonist and a good role model – not that she doesn’t make silly mistakes and choices along the way. She’s also a familiar character and reminds me that what’s considered “ordinary” usually disguises something pretty extraordinary. Plus, I love her summing-up up Marx’s contradictions of capitalism; despite the fluffy pink cover, this is no Gossip Girls kind of book – Mia’s not into having the latest crap: she’s a conscientious worrier. She wants to join Greenpeace to save the whales. I did not realize that Meg Cabot had written 11 books about Mia and her journey to becoming Prince’s Genovia, but I had this book on my shelf for several years. My copy is from Borders, which went out of business forever ago. I thoroughly enjoyed the movies, and I am the kind of person who wants to read books as well as enjoy movies. The grandma in the books and the grandma we get in Julie Andrews are vastly different, at least in this first book. I appreciate that each book is just over 200 pages, so while you are wrapped up in some teenage drama series, you do know where the story will go if you see the movies. In ways, I see myself in Mia as I was not a popular girl. I did not have the fantastic drop-dead looks (and still don’t), but I knew I did not want to be fake like the characters Mia interacts with—a great start to the series.

About Meg cabot

Meg Cabot is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of books for both adults and tweens/teens. Born in the year of the Fire Horse (a notoriously unlucky astrological sign) and raised in Bloomington, Indiana, Meg also lived in Grenoble, France and Carmel, California (the setting for her bestselling Mediator series) before moving to New York City after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Indiana University.

After working for ten years as an assistant residence hall director at New York University (an experience from which she occasionally draws inspiration for her best-selling Heather Wells mystery series), Meg wrote the Princess Diaries series, which was made into two hit movies by Disney. While over 25 million copies of Meg’s nearly 80 published books have been sold in 38 countries, Meg’s most proud of the letters she’s received from fans thanking her for helping them to overcome their “dislike of reading.”

Some of Meg’s fan favorites include the 1-800-Where-R-You? series (which has been reprinted under the title Vanished and was made into the Lifetime series called Missing), as well as All-American Girl and Avalon High (on which an original Disney Channel movie was based), and several books told entirely in emails and text messages (Boy Next Door/Boy Meets Girl/Every Boy’s Got One). A fourth book told in this format, The Boy is Back, was published by HarperCollins in 2017.

Meg’s first ever adult book in the Princess Diaries series, Royal Wedding, was published in 2015, along with a new Princess Diaries series for younger readers, From the Notebook of a Middle School Princess, which Meg also illustrated. The 4th book in the Middle School Princess Series, Royal Crown, was published in August of 2018, as well as paperback editions of the 2nd and 3rd editions series.

Remembrance, the 7th and first adult book in the Mediator series, became available in 2016, along with a novella titled Proposal. In 2020, Meg signed a franchise deal with Netflix for screen rights to The Mediator series, along with writer/director Sarah Spillane and media powerhouse Debra Martin Chase.

In 2019, Meg authored a Black Canary graphic novel for DC Zoom for middle-grade readers with illustrator Cara McGee, and also launched a new adult contemporary series set on the fictional Little Bridge Island in the Florida Keys. While each book in the series focuses on a different couple and their sometimes humorous, sometimes serious struggles, all guarantee a Happily Ever After (with plenty of sunshine and margaritas). The latest, No Words, debuted in September 2021.

And finally, Meg has written Quarantine Princess Diaries, a new novel for adults in The Princess Diaries series, was released in March of 2023! 10% of Meg’s proceeds from the sale of this book will go to real life royal Princess Mabel van Oranje of the Netherlands’ charity to end child marriage www.vowforgirls.org.

Meg Cabot (her last name rhymes with habit, as in “her books can be habit forming”) currently lives in Key West, Florida with her husband and various cats. If you see her husband, please do not tell him that he married a fire horse, as he has not figured it out yet.

Reading this book contributed to these challenges: