Princess Diaries Series Review by Natasha

Natasha Zwijacz

Extreme Reading

Hour: 8

May 25, 2013

            Did you want to be a princess when you were growing up?  Well Mia Thermopolis sure didn’t want to and when she was told that her father was the prince of Genovia, which made her the princess of Genovia, she wanted to run away.  Meg Cabot is an author of many novels and series but her most well-known series is the Princess Diaries.  In Meg Cabot’s Princess Diaries book series readers are introduced to a Mia Thermopolis’ growth over ten novels with a few novellas’s tucked in between.  Mia starts off as a quiet, shy, tall, flat chested female with uncontrollably wild hair but by the time we reach the end of the final novel in the series Mia is more outgoing has had a makeover and figured out who her true friends are and who her heart lies with.  So since Mia started off as a normal teen, she wasn’t perfect and wasn’t good with boys, it made her a very easy character to connect with and what made me want to read the entire series; it also helped that there was a character that Mia falls in love with who Meg describes so perfectly I wish I had a boyfriend like him.

            By the time readers read Forever Princess, the last novel in the series, Mia is getting ready to take on her role as heir to the throne Amelia Migonete Grimaldi Thermopolis Rinaldi princess of Genovia.  She isn’t exactly popular but she has friends who love her and a boyfriend who wants to take her to prom, which is one of the most important things about her senior year.  Now to the outside world Mia seems okay but on the inside she is fighting with herself because Lily still won’t talk to her, and it’s been that way ever since she started dating J.P, and Michael Moscovitz has been back in town and confusing all of Mia’s feelings.  Then prom happens and Mia becomes even more confused but can she really ever make out the truth?

            I was hooked so quickly on this series but Forever Princess really held my attention.  I couldn’t put the book down because Meg Cabot was so clever with her writing.  The most important thing about Mia is that she didn’t let what others say about her affect her in a negative way and she didn’t let the princess thing go to her head.  Now Mia is quiet and self-reserved unless it is something she is really concerned about, like the environment, then she puts her whole heart into it and makes sure that the world knows what is going on.  This is easy for many teens and even adults to connect with because when people care about something they tend to pursue it more strongly than if it is something they do not care about.  So although this is just a fictional novel Meg Cabot does such a fantastic job on writing Mia’s character so as to connect with anyone from teen to adulthood.

            Now the thing about Mia is that sometimes she becomes so hard headed about something that she doesn’t look at the in plain sight facts around her.  Mia wouldn’t listen to Lily when all Lily was trying to do was tell her that J.P. was bad news and that her brother, Michael, didn’t do anything wrong.  Since Mia refused to listen to Lily, Mia lost Lily’s friendship and ended up getting hurt at prom.  What this proves is that being strong headed is great when you are trying to be passionate about something like saving the planet, which Mia was, but being too strong headed can cause many to lose focus and miss important details that can save them from getting hurt.

            So in the end Meg Cabot made it very easy for me to connect with Mia in not only Forever Princess but all of the Princess Diaries books.  She is a very passionate person that I tend to look up to.  Forever Princess was a great end to a fantastic series!  I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who has seen the movies and liked them, likes strong heroines, or drama and romance.