Review By: Normal Name
2/5 Stars
The Princess Diaries is most notorious for its movies starring Anne Hathaway. But the movies were actually based on the book The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot. The story is about a 14 year old girl named Mia, who's currently living in Manhattan. After finding out that her father can't have anymore children due to cancer, he admits that he is the ruler of a small country between France and Italy called Genovia. They rule in a monarchy and since he can no long produce another heir Mia is destined to be Genovia's next princess. Mia has to learn how to balance the media, her princess training, boys, and school all while he mom is going out with her algebra teacher. I personally have quite a few issues with this book. While I understand that Cabot was trying to write a realistic teen girl who wouldn't want to be a princess, it comes off as very whiny and pretentious. Throughout the novel Mia is constantly complaining how unfair her life is and that everything bad always happens to. This is all while she is attending an expensive private school, her mother is an extremely fortunate artist, and she is granted the opportunity of a life time that some girls would genuinely kill for. Mia is never forced to endure true hardship and just comes off as a brat. Mia does suffer from bullying towards the beginning and end of the novel but it definitely could have been a lot worse. While her rival Lana made a couple of scathing comments they did happen often enough or were bad enough that I consider it an extremely difficult burden. She also has a tendency to be very self righteous. While I have no issue with people being vegetarian, which she is actually technically pescetarian, the way Meg Cabot writes Mia, she has a habit as coming across as thinking she is superior. Mia overall never acknowledges her privilege of any kind and never seems to be the tiniest but grateful for anything. Later on in the book (spoiler warning, skip to spoiler ending if interested) Mia is ultimately used and sort of played but the boy she was pining after the entire novel, but she takes it in stride. As soon as she realizes he's using her she isn't sad, she isn't disappointed, she just brushes it off. It's hard to even qualify it as a hardship because while it was pretty crappy it did not matter to her at all. But it doesn't even matter if it did matter because it's all made up for at the end of the book because she gets a perfect happy ending because her friend's brother likes her instead. (Spoiler end) I believe that it is very possible to write a flawed and human character without coming across as a brat. I can offer sympathy and understanding to characters who make lapses in their judgment but Mia in the novel is just such an unlikable character. She has almost no positive qualities and the novel is just essential her pity party about what people dream of. I understand not wanting to be a princess but the way Mia goes about it is so aggravating. Overall the book wasn't totally bad. It was decently interesting but I found it often times lacked substance and that the characters were very two dimensional. The diary format is very unique and not a literary technique employed in most novels and can definitely be appealing to some readers. I believe the author tried to make it as realistic as possible by adding English and Math notes at the bottom of the pages but I honestly just found it distracting and kind of a waste of page room. Getting to see the dynamics of a household with separate parents can also be interesting but I don't think it was truly delved into enough in this novel to truly be something moving or deep. I do like the way toxic friendship was illustrated though. In the book Mia has a friend named Lilly who is very much a toxic friend. She is constantly critiquing and criticizing every little thing that Mia does. Lilly always insists on making decisions for Mia and is very obsessive. Mia gets no space to breathe but even so, when Mia temporarily cuts ties with her she misses Lilly. The book is great at portraying the struggles of dealing with a toxic friendship because it's never only bad. There are good parts to a toxic friendship and you end up missing those parts and I think it was portrayed very well. Overall I can't say that I really recommended this book even though I didn't hate it. If you're interested, give it a read but based on what I've heard the film adaptation significantly improved upon its source material and is just overall the better story.