A review by yvo_about_books
The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot

2.0

Finished reading: August 30th 2023


“Maybe nobody has a right to tell anybody to shut up. Maybe this is how wars get started, because someone tells someone else to shut up, and then no one will apologize.”

WARNING: it's unpopular opinion time yet again!!

It's true that I don't read a lot of YA anymore, but I needed a book for the lost royalty prompt for the Beat The Backlist Bingo challenge and there weren't many options. Add the fact that I really enjoyed the movie back when it came out, and I ended up actually being quite excited to revisit these characters and read the original story. I sure didn't expect to come very close to DNFing instead! Whatever The Princess Diaries is, it is nothing like the movie adaptation. I don't say this often, but the movie is in this case WAY better than the book. I'm actually glad I never read the book as a teenager, because I don't think I would have watched the adaptation otherwise... Mia is just SO incredibly unlikeable in the book, and I started to hate her more and more with each chapter. The constant repetition, the whining, the complaining... It was just all way too much to be entertaining. I wasn't a fan of the writing style either, with the constant interruptions, random notes and math. I get that this is supposed to be a diary, but it just really disrupted the flow of the story. Nothing much was happening either; the book only covers part of the first movie, and not the most interesting part at that. The characters in general were rather dull and unlikeable, and I confess I only made it to the end because I started skimreading. I guess that it won't come as a surprise that I won't be continuing this series... I'll stick with the movie instead. 
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