When Rosamund is awoken from a hundred year sleep by a stranger’s kiss, she runs from him – and escapes into a strange school to join other fairytale princesses (and a prince) trying to avoid their futures. But all is not as it seems, and the headmistress may be keeping a sinister secret.
At some point in the 2010s fairytale retellings seemed all the rage. I enjoyed them generally until they started blending together, but that doesn’t mean I’m not always up for a new variation! In this middle grade book though, we get more of a metafiction twist than a straight-up retelling.
This is a fast-paced adventurous story which stars Rosamund, aka Sleeping Beauty, who upon awaking runs out of her story into the safety of the Princess Protection Program. She’s an adorable lead, full of curiosity and with a penchant for asking hard questions fearlessly, which serves her well throughout the book. I appreciated the not-so-obvious lesson that the students learn by the end of the story of how to handle their storybook problems.
However, the humor was a little hit-and-miss, combining sly humor about fairytale tropes that seemed aimed for older readers with the kind of gross-out humor that would probably entertain a younger audience. I also thought that the middle of the book lagged a little, and that I would have liked to have seen a stronger foundation established for Rosamund’s friendship with Rana, Sirena, and the other students toward the start of the story.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.