Chosen to be Princess

Hello, everyone! It’s Erin. Again, I have a different review process than Charity, and that’s okay! We’re all different; that’s why we’re two friends, not the exact same person making the exact same posts, yada yada yada.

I hope you enjoy this review! It’s on my absolute favorite book growing up, Princess Academy by Shannon Hale.

I always identified with Miri, feeling smaller and insignificant around my peers because I’m smaller than them. But I learned to put my identity in Jesus, and that changed how I feel about myself. I also remember Psalm 139:13-14.

Now, this book isn’t explicitly Christian, of course, but there are Christian themes.

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This is no ordinary Cinderella story. Because, sometimes, the girl doesn’t get the prince. In Princess Academy by Shannon Hale, Newberry Honor medalist, twenty girls are given the opportunity to become princesses. But there is a catch: only one of them will be chosen. They have to go through a year of training to be a princess, and even then, all but one will go home, not a princess.

The story opens with Miri Larendaughter, a tiny fourteen-year-old girl who has never worked in the linder quarries of Mount Eskel due to a mining accident that killed her mother a week after Miri was born, waking up. She cleans the house and watches her pa and sister, Marda, go to work in the quarry. She feels insignificant, like she will never measure up because she is the only Eskelite who has never worked with the stone. That day, the traders come, and with them a noble messenger announcing the future betrothal of Prince Steffan. All girls between twelve and eighteen are required by the king to spend a year in training. There would be a ball, and the prince would choose his bride then.

The princess academy is started, and there is rivalry between the classmates and cold-heartedness from Tutor Olana. She locks them in the closet with a rat and hits them, something these girls have never been accustomed to. But as time goes on, the girls run away and come back with terms, and the tutor agrees to them. Things are better, but still tense. The new girl, Britta, seems weird and out-of-place, and Miri is drawn to her because she always was the ugly duckling, the odd one out.

The prince comes and dances with them at the ball, but then leaves without making his decision. A blizzard snows them in after bandits take them all captive. Can Miri have the chance to save all of her classmates?

This is a story of friends and loyalty and discovering one’s true identity. Our identity isn’t found in what others think of us; it’s about what is inside us. Hale has masterfully woven this theme throughout this beautiful book. Readers must read on to see if the girls will be saved and who will, in the end, be chosen to be the princess.

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If you ever read this book, please share! And if you have read this book, what are your thoughts on it?

Have a great day!