Royal Wedding by Meg Cabot


Princess Mia is not so young and awkward anymore… well okay, maybe she’s a little awkward still. As the title suggests there are some upcoming nuptials for Mia and Michael, but nothing is ever simple in Princess Diary land. With the usual array of characters, a brazen internet blogger, online stalker and a remarkable 12 year old, we go on a wedding planning adventure… Princess style.

With paparazzi making life difficult, and family that aren’t helping much either, she’s not getting any time to relax. That is, until Michael whisks her away for a romantic birthday getaway on a remote island resort. No paps, no cameras and no wi-fi. It couldn’t be more romantic. *big sigh* Getting back to reality is a little harder than they bargained for when they realise someone has leaked news of their engagement. You won’t need three guesses to work out who.

How on Earth does Mia make it through a week with family politics, country politics and an unexpected trip for an x-ray that leads to something even more unexpected?

As usual Cabot has brought us a wholly enjoyable read. I finished it in one sitting, about 7 hours, totally worth it, who needs to be awake at work on a Friday anyway? It’s fast paced and exciting, difficult to say exactly, but I would estimate 8 bombshells dropped in this book.

Well what can I say? I think I might borrow from George Takei… “oh myyy!” While I enjoyed this books a few things leave me… baffled? Maybe not quite the right word.

Everywhere you look online, “Princess Diaries 11” is on the blurb for this book. Technically, yes, it is that, but I feel that is a very bad advertising choice. I really don’t think that this book should be suggested as a read for the same aged people who read Princess Diaries. Yes the book blurb says “adult installment”, but you’re still proclaiming it as a kids book by linking it with the series. Even Pan Macmillan are confused…


The cover, while beautiful, doesn’t help its case. Looking at it without association it’s chick-lit [I don’t use this as a derogatory phrase, I like chick-lit and it perfectly sums up the modern day real life romance genre], and normally that would be fine. But with the connection to the original series it will appeal to the tweens, because it’s Mia.

On our own website it was automatically classified for age 11-15, which was the information we received through the database. I went in and changed it to 16+, but after reading it I took off the age altogether and sat bemused because of three things in the book. 1] Mia has a twitching eye, and they “are very often caused by a magnesium deficiency and that human spermatozoa are a rich source of magnesium.” 2] Mia and Michael have a fireman game. 2] and an alien explorer game. [sci-fi geeks are everywhere these days.] Maybe I’m being prudish, after all, none of those points are overly explicit in the text, and it’s mostly what you infer from it. [Let’s not go into what this says about me.]

Am I being too over protective? All I can see in my head is a book shelf in a secondary school, all the Princess Diaries lined up, and a 12 year old picking “Royal Wedding” off the shelf. I don’t have kids of my own, but I’ve had plenty of experience with parents objecting to the content of a book advertised to their children. [Even one woman who objected to us facing out a book about breast cancer because it had a woman holding her breasts across the front cover. I didn’t like to point out that we’d put it high enough for younger kids not to be able to see… and had she not pointed it out her child wouldn’t have seen it.]

Notebooks of a Middle School Princess and Royal Wedding have entangled story lines as well. It was good to be able to see how the story line in Notebooks came about. It was nice to be able to read the two books together.

Having read that all back I feel like I’m overreacting, but from experience I feel like it’s an important point. For a Princess Diary veteran who read them when they first came out, this is a good book. For a chick-lit lover, this is a good book. Purely for the content reasons I’d be hesitant to recommend it to a secondary school. While it would be fine for the over 16s I would be reluctant to have it in a library that catered for the lower years. It is a case of personal preference, but from experience I would see several parents taking issue.



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