Looking at the cover again now, there’s so much I previously missed. The cover is just as sweet as the story it’s concealing! Until I actually picked up the book and started reading, I thought this novel was going to be another Sleeping Beauty story, albeit one where the Princess somehow didn’t fall asleep. I would have loved to see what happened next and wasn’t quite ready to leave Annie behind she’s such a strong heroine that she wormed her way irrevocably into my heart.Įven better? Annie's adventures are now an entire series! I've been coveting a re-read of this fabulous book, and I'm excited to have even more books to read once I'm done returning to this world! This book hit my sweet spot in all the right ways.

I especially loved the way romance builds between Annie and Liam despite their opposite roles in society. The way the novel arrives at its conclusion was completely satisfactory. There’s even a fairy tale role for Annie, which I didn’t see coming, but was delighted about. Along the way, she encounters a mish-mash of fairy tale encounters such as Hansel and Gretel as cleverly thrown together as something out of Stephen Sondheim’s epic musical Into the Woods or the Shrek movies. Liam joins Annie on her journey to gather up princes in an attempt to find her sister’s True Love. He gets all shame-faced about it, but Annie could care less. One thing that hooked me early on was the way Annie saves Liam ( one of the unaffected guards who was away from the palace when the curse set in). I hate how fairy tales can fall into tropes where the prince is always the one to save the day and rescue the powerless maiden. THE WIDE-AWAKE PRINCESS is her story, and deservedly so-Annie is one kick-ass heroine! When Gwendolyn pricks her finger and sends her kingdom into one hundred years of sleep, Annie is the only one unaffected. Not wanting another cursed princess, the King and Queen ask one fairy to gift Annie when she is born, making it so that no magic (good or bad) can ever harm her. As babies, Gwendolyn was cursed, destined to prick her finger on a spinning wheel upon turning sixteen. The novel revolves around Princess Annie, the younger sister of Crown Princess Gwendolyn. I think it’s my favorite book yet by Baker, who wrote the Tales of the Frog Princess series (the first novel was the inspiration for Disney’s The Princess and the Frog). With all this talk lately regarding the merits of fractured fairy tales, sometimes it’s nice to just sit back and enjoy a sugar-spun story. This is a favorite middle-grade retelling of mine, and I thought it would be fun to introduce it to you if you haven't yet heard about it or picked it up!

The wide awake princess by ed baker