Melanie Cellier manages a contemporary tone within her fantasy novels. They are light, fun, fast reads with a touch of magic and a good dose of sweet romance. The Princess Companion wasn't the first book I've read of Cellier's but it was the first one she wrote. I was a bit hesitant, thinking that perhaps her first novel would be littered with weaknesses that she perhaps grew out of in later books. I was pleasantly surprised that The Princess Companion was on par with her later books.
There were parts I didn't love, some lines of dialogue that were blunt or simplistic and so sounded out of character; bits of internal monologue that were a little obvious or jarringly contemporary and again sounded out of character. The end felt both rushed and drawn out because it was obvious how the pieces were going to fall into place and two weeks had to pass of nothing happened until suddenly the thing we all knew was coming finally happened.
The first half of the book was cute and thrived on the interactions with the different characters and their interactions. The second half added more characters but they felt less developed and the story felt less vibrant without that dynamic of the other characters and focused more on Alyssa.
The world Cellier has built is broad and interconnected which is mildly interesting. Those connective threads make it more intriguing to read another book and find the connections between the characters. The difficult is that there are a lot of characters and they aren't really distinctive. I've read two books in Lanover, one each in Arcadia and Northhelm and I still can't keep the different kingdoms straight (it gets even worse when you move beyond the four kingdoms). They talk about different customs and cultures but they don't really seem to have distinguishing characteristics. The princesses barely have distinguishing characteristics enough that I could remember which princess is in which book or which kingdom each is from. And yet, I'll read another one when I'm in the mood for something like and easy and pleasantly fun.