The Princess Game: A Reimagining of Sleeping Beauty (Four Kingdoms, #4)

by Melanie Cellier

They call her the Sleeping Princess, but Celeste is far from asleep…

Celeste has been cursed since her sixteenth birthday--just not in the way the rest of the kingdom thinks. All they see is her breath-taking beauty, marred by her foolishness. Only she knows that she retains her brilliant mind. And it’s a secret she must keep at all costs.

Over the years she’s grown accustomed to the necessary deception. After all, her life depends on it. And she’s even found a way to protect her kingdom, working from the shadows. But now a dangerous new threat has emerged, one that Celeste can’t defeat alone. She needs the help of a newly-arrived prince. One who’s altogether too handsome and too charming. Somehow she needs to keep her secret, save her kingdom and find a way to free herself from the curse. The last thing she has time to do is sleep.

In this reimagining of the classic fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty, it’s only the princess’ mind that is asleep. And sometimes appearances can be deceiving.

• ISBN10: 0648080188
• ISBN13: 9780648080183
• Publish Date: 6 March 2019
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: AU
• Imprint: Luminant Publications
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 316
• Language: English

Reviews

[ladygrey]

A mildly entertaining read. The writing is a bit pedestrian but the characters are engaging enough (if a tiny bit lacking in development). She wonderfully knows how to take a wrong turn and have it make the story more interesting. So Cellier should get credit for that if nothing else (that and GORGEOUS covers).

I liked that the story wasn’t predictable at all, even being based on a fairy tale. It moved and changed with a pretty good pace (though with only the barest hint of too much internal monologue—not not enough dialog but the constraints of the story sort of force that—most of the internal monologue was nicely reactionary and relevant rather than brooding).

I liked what there was of the main characters. Except don’t give all the girls such similar sounding names! It’s not even that they all start with C’s but Celeste and Clarisse and Celine and I don’t even know who the others are. Like anyone could keep that straight. Celeste also was a bit too much. Too smart and too beautiful and to good of a fighter and everyone deferred to her as being absolutely right and worthy of devotion. I’d rather see some flaws that had nothing to do with the curse. Or some strengths in her friends and family where they balanced her, like with kindness or compassion or generosity. And Celeste never learned a lesson in humility, just saying. Some sort of balance would have made all the characters more dynamic.

It’s a good fairy tale, though. Sweet and fun enough and plenty of things going on. It reminded me a bit too much of Enchanted (which is a better book) with the godmother and their family gifts and things. But there’s more innocence in this one then there is in the sequels so maybe it evens them out a bit.

Even though this is book 4, I liked that I could start here (because it’s the one library got to me first) without feeling like I’d skipped over anything. The books share characters but stand alone really well. So I’ll have a little bit of fun reading the earlier books when I can.