Blog Tour – Undercover Princess

From Goodreads:

When fairy tale obsessed Lottie Pumpkin starts at the infamous Rosewood Hall, she is not expecting to share a room with the Crown Princess of Maradova, Ellie Wolf. Due to a series of lies and coincidences, 14-year-old Lottie finds herself pretending to be the princess so that Ellie can live a more normal teenage life.

Lottie is thrust into the real world of royalty – a world filled with secrets, intrigue and betrayal. She must do everything she can to help Ellie keep her secret, but with school, the looming Maradovian ball and the mysterious new boy Jamie, she’ll soon discover that reality doesn’t always have the happily ever after you’d expect…

This is super cute. It definitely sits in that valley of older middle grade younger YA so is the perfect bridging book for those age groups. I think this would be particularly enjoyed by ages 11- 14 who have such few books directly aimed at them.

The Characters are great. I love how driven Lottie is, how self confident and independent Ellie is and how stoic Jamie is. They are a great team and play well off of each other. The friendship and love that grows between them. The setting is also fantastic. I adore the trope of elite schools filled with posh kids all sniping at each other, and this is filled with untrustworthy arrogant, yet driven and friendly student body. There is also lots of nods to LGBTQIA+ rep within the world this is set in.

The one thing that really stood out to me was all the nods to various fairy tales all throughout the book. We have so many like nods and winks from everything from the princess and the Pea, Cinderella, sleeping beauty, the Prince and the Pauper and even The Princess Bride sneaks a wee line in there. I liked this as it gave a real familiarity to it all. However, the book does suffer from absent adult syndrome. There are little to know adults mentioned or with any agency in the book which leaves the teens to run free and get themselves into some situations that would just be avoided completely by having adults in charge of the situation and doing their jobs. This has always been a big plot hole for me in these kind of books that just bother me.

Overall, its a sweet fairy tale like story reminiscent of things like the princess switch and the princess diaries. Cute with a little bit of danger, filled with friendship and adventure.