How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True

by Sarah Strohmeyer

[Rowena]

I’m a huge fan of contemporary romances (YA and adult) so it wasn’t a surprise when this book caught my eye. I’ve never read anything by this author before but I’ve always wanted to and I’m glad that I picked this one up for review.

This book reminded me of that one movie, The Devil Wears Prada where the main character worked for a beast of a woman and that’s exactly who Zoe works for in this book. She scores an intern to work at what is the equivalent of Disney World but the re-enactment camp version. At Fairyland Kingdom, everyone is in this huge play. While the customers are on site, everyone is in character. There are the Princes and the Princesses (Cinderella, Snow White, Prince Charming, etc…) and all of the minor characters. While the park is open, if you’re on shift then you’re in character. There are rules that come with this gig and if you break those rules, you get sent home….without a chance to win the $25,000 Dream & Do grant for college.

So that’s where Zoe is spending her summer. She’s at Fairyland and her role is to play a Lady in Waiting to the Queen. It’s a pretty big job, one that has her doing all sorts of things to try to save everyone and a job that had me laughing a great deal while reading.

Getting to know Zoe as she tries to do her job so good so that her cousin (who needs money for college) can the grant and they can all live happily ever after. Getting to that happily ever after took a lot of hard work on Zoe’s part and when all was said and done, I really liked Zoe’s character. She was fun, she was strong and she was loyal. She was everything that I like in main characters and I liked the story because of her.

A couple of things that took me out of the story were very minor things. Like, in the beginning of the story, Zoe is describing her cousin Jess and here’s what she said:

"Jess is petite like that. Childlike fingers. Wispy, pale blond hair that she usually yanks into ap onytail so it doesn’t fly into her clear blue eyes. All her life people have been telling her she’s a little Cinderella, sweet and kind. (Yeah, right. They haven’t seen her spike a volleyball with seconds on the clock.)"

This bothered me because I attend a lot of volleyball games and most of them are high school volleyball games. I have a lot of nieces and a nephew that play so when I read that, it sounded wrong. First off, volleyball players don’t say spike anymore. They say hit, easy peasy and secondly, high school volleyball (at least here in California) isn’t a timed sports. It’s like baseball, it goes by the number of points scored. First team to 25 (you have to be win by 2 points though so if it’s 24-24, they’ll keep playing until one team goes up by 2 points) wins. And you play the best of 3 or 5. So yeah, that took me out of the story because it didn’t sound right to me.

Another thing that I didn’t think was right is the guy on the cover doesn’t look at all like an Abercrombie and Fitch model. I just, well, I don’t see it.

Aside from that, this book was fun and it was cute. Two things that I adore in books. I really enjoyed getting to know Zoe, I thought Ian was too cute for words and I really liked the way that the story came together. I definitely recommend this book.