Katie’s #CBR4 Review #35: Abandon by Meg Cabot

Title: Abandon
Author: Meg Cabot
Source: bought for book signing
Rating: ★★★★☆
Review Summary: In a lot of ways this is a fairly typical YA romance with a strong heroine, but it’s also well written, enjoyable, and made unique by its’ basis in mythology and the heroine’s unique voice.

Like Dead Beautiful, Meg Cabot’s Abandon trilogy is a re-telling of the Persephone myth, although in this case only the starting point of the story really comes from the myth. The Greek gods aren’t part of the story at all and while a lot of elements of the Greek underworld are used, even the basic explanation for the way the Underworld works is different. What is the same is that the lord of the underworld does fall in love with our heroine, Pierce. He does kidnap her, in a way, but in his defense she’s already dead in this version. She manages to escape and is resuscitated by her doctors; which of these events is the cause and which the effect is left for the reader to determine. Unfortunately for Pierce, escaping the underworld doesn’t resolve anything.  She now has trouble fitting back into her old life and still has to deal with the lord of the underworld appearing to “help” her, usually causing her some trouble himself as well.

Read more here…

ambern’s #CBR4 Review #20 Forever Princess by Meg Cabot

The final volume of the Princess Diaries series picks up over a year after the last one, right before Mia’s graduation from high school.  She hasn’t been writing in her journal because she was busy completing her senior project—a romance novel.  Of course she has led her friends and family to believe that she wrote about the history of Genovian olive oil pressing to ensure that they will not ask to read it.

Mia has been accepted into every school that she applies for but is reluctant to go to any of them because she feels that they only want a princess at their schools and her novel (submitted under a pseudonym) hasn’t been accepted by any publishers.  She is still dating J.P. but doesn’t feel as happy with him as she was with Michael, and J.P. doesn’t smell as good either.  So when Michael comes back from Japan, Mia is eager and nervous to see him.

While she wants to focus on Michael and how he feels about her, Mia has several obligations to worry about: her birthday gala, prom, graduation, choosing a college, and the outcome of Genovia’s first elections.  High school is almost over and she is realizing just how scary it is to leave it behind and become an adult.

I love this book and feel that it wrapped the series up well.  While I would love to have more of these characters, there is closure for everyone so I can’t be too upset.  Overall this is a silly series that I just can’t get enough of and I will miss the intensely crazy Mia Thermopolis.

ambern’s #CBR4 Review #19 Princess Mia by Meg Cabot

So after the events at the end of the last book, Mia’s life is in upheaval and she refuses to get out of bed.  It gets so bad that her parents have to resort to something that was a long time coming—they bring her to a psychologist.

While Mia hoped that the accidental kiss with J.P. wouldn’t bother Michael, he decided that they had too many issues to be anything more than friends for the present.  Lily refuses to even talk to her, leaving her without her best friend or her boyfriend for support.  After wallowing for several days, she is unceremoniously brought to Dr. Knutz’s office in the hopes that she will start to shower again.

Aside from losing two of the most important people in her life, Mia faces more humiliation from a new spiteful website, and the increasing anxiety over a speech that she must give to a prestigious female organization.  To help her cope, Mia discovers new and unlikely friends and a diary from an ancestor that has a profound impact on her life.

This is one of my favorite books in the series, probably because there is very little of Lily in it.  Or it could be how Mia’s depression is portrayed.  I can remember having thoughts just like that in high school (and beyond) and times where it seemed exhausting to pretend to be okay.  In the end there is hope for Mia, and a lot of relief.

ambern’s #CBR4 Review #18 Princess on the Brink by Meg Cabot

Mia is a junior now and while she is saddled with Precalculus and Ms. Martinez the unsupportive English teacher, she is excited about the new school year.  That is until Michael drops a bomb on her—he is moving to Japan, immediately.

Over the summer Michael built a prototype of a robotic arm that could revolutionize heart surgery and a Japanese company wants him to oversee the building of a working model.  It is a great opportunity and he will get course credit, but he will also have to be gone for at least a year.  Obviously, this news sends Mia in a tailspin.  To keep him in the country, she even seeks out Grandmere’s advice—that’s how desperate she is.  Of course this advice is a step that Mia isn’t sure that she is ready for, but if it can keep him in the country she will consider it.

I’m not going to lie; there is quite a lot of drama in this one.  Mia really isn’t equipped to deal with something like this and she has never been really good at taking sound advice.  I still liked this one, but would recommend reading the next part right after, the ending to this book is a little upsetting.

ambern’s #CBR4 Review #17 Party Princess by Meg Cabot

Well this is it.  This is the one where everyone finds out who the Guy Who Hates It When They Put Corn in the Chili is.  Mia is well into her sophomore year and is not doing as well as class president as she hoped.  She bankrupted the student treasury with a well intentioned (and misspelled purchase).  She needs to find some more money before graduation or risk a beating by Amber Cheeseman, the surprisingly athletic valedictorian.

Grandmere has a plan to raise the money and promote Genovia—a musical starring Mia and her friends.  Braid will also star John Paul Reynolds Abernathy IV, the son of her competitor for an island purchase.  Of course Grandmere sees him as a much more suitable mate than Michael, so she tries to manipulate them into a relationship.  It doesn’t help that Michael has been distant, which Mia attributes to her homebody nature.

While I still like it, this is probably my least favorite book of the series for me.  Mia is just too dramatic in this one, but it does help set up the remainder of the series, so I let it go.  Like with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

ambern’s #CBR4 Review #16 Princess in Training by Meg Cabot

After spending two months in Genovia, Mia is back in New York and ready to start her sophomore year of high school.  She has been busy spoiling her little brother, Rocky, and worrying that her mom and Mr. Gianni aren’t paying enough attention to him.  She also misses going to school with Michael, who has started at Columbia, and worries that they will not be able to spend enough time together.

This fear is put on the backburner though when Lana approaches Mia during school and talks to her about the expectations of college boys.  Now Mia is terrified that Michael will want to have sex right away, but in true Mia form, she is too embarrassed to talk to him about it.  This fear even overshadows her troubles with Lily, who nominated Mia for class president against her will.  Lily insists that Mia will not have to do anything, but Mia is justifiably skeptical.

This is another fun if somewhat frustrating volume of the series, but that is just because she wasn’t being honest enough with Michael.  But if she weren’t I guess there wouldn’t be enough drama, or something.  It wasn’t until this book that I realized the extent of her addiction to her journal.  When she is at the class president debate, she is still writing and they have to force her to stop.  It seems like a little thing but it really does put a different image of her in my head—one that is even more neurotic than I thought.

ambern’s #CBR4 Review #15 Princess in Pink by Meg Cabot

So the end of Mia’s first year of high school is fast approaching.  She is content with most aspects of her life, except for the always-infuriating Grandmere and Michael’s resistance to prom.  She wonders how she could have overlooked this severe defect in the love of her life.

But while the thought that she might never get to be like Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink (minus the terrible things she did to that dress), she does have more pressing problems.  While celebrating Mia’s fifteenth birthday, Grandmere inadvertently causes a strike of service workers.  New York restaurants and hotels are crippled and events are canceled for the foreseeable future.  It doesn’t help that Lily has thrown herself in defense of the workers and is in danger of destroying her relationship with Boris.

This one is not my favorite because it has far too much of Lily being insanely selfish.  She is like this most of the time of course but it was ridiculous in this volume.  It’s still a fun book for crazy ass Mia and Grandmere though.  And I’m going to sound like a total high school girl now, but I wish that Michael Moscovitz were real.

ambern’s #CBR4 Review #14 Princess in Waiting by Meg Cabot

While she may not have achieved self-actualization yet, Mia feels that she is well on her way to lifetime happiness because she has finally started dating Michael.  Unfortunately, she had to leave for Genovia right when they declared their love for each other.  So the first part of the book consists of Mia’s royal duties and her longing for Michael, who she has a hard time catching on the phone.

Her unrelenting obsession with ‘that boy’ prompts Grandmere to give Mia a copy of Jane Eyre.  She hopes that Mia will learn that playing hard to get is the best course of action where men are concerned.  Of course when Mia and Tina try to model themselves after Jane, things start to unravel in their relationships.  Go figure.

When Mia is finally able to leave Genovia she leaves quite the impression, and disturbs a good percentage of the government with her radical parking meter idea.  So it is decided that she needs more princess lessons with Grandmere, much to Mia’s displeasure.  She also has another semester of Algebra to look forward to and a wealth of social obligations that don’t sound nearly as promising as a night watching Star Wars with Michael.

This volume is much like the others, I always get a little frustrated with Mia, but I enjoy her and the other characters nonetheless.  Probably my favorite side note for this book is the introduction of the movies into the story.  They mock certain parts of it, like the dad being dead and the grandmother being nice.  It’s short but it makes me giggle.

ambern’s #CBR4 Review #13 Princess in Love by Meg Cabot

Well, Mia has a boyfriend now.  And she realizes that she should be excited but she’s not.  It’s not that she hates Kenny, but she doesn’t feel anything beyond friendship for him and dreads those moments when she is expected to kiss him.  But in an effort to be nice (and because she can’t have the guy she really wants) Mia stays in an unhappy relationship.

But what hurts worse is that Michael is apparently now deeply involved with the fruit fly-cloning senior Judith Gershner.  How could Mia ever compete with someone as smart and advanced as Judith?  Her friends and family all tell her to be honest with Kenny and Michael, but that is far too sensible a suggestion for someone like Mia.  Plus she really wants to go to the Nondenominational Winter Dance and if she breaks things off with Kenny and Michael rejects her, then she won’t have a date.  A little selfish but she is fourteen after all.

More important than this though is her upcoming debut to the Genovian people.  Grandmere has been preparing her for months but Mia is still terrified that she will screw up somehow.  But it is more possible that her mom and Mr. Gianni will mess up her carefully laid out feeding and cleaning schedule for her beloved cat Fat Louie.

This book is much like the others: fun, short, and full of teenage drama.  I know that I probably should have grown past books like these, but I’m not sure that I will.  For some reason the predictability of these books doesn’t get to me at all.

ambern’s #CBR4 Review #12 Princess in the Spotlight by Meg Cabot

Volume two of the Princess Diaries series picks up the day after the last one ended, with Mia in for another life-changing surprise—she is about to become an older sister.  Her mom and Mr. Gianni have been very irresponsible and now Mia has to quickly get comfortable with the idea that her algebra teacher is going to be a part of her life forever.

In addition to that, Grandmere has arranged a television interview with one of the most popular reporters to prepare Mia for her formal introduction to the Genovian people.  Obviously, this will not end well for someone as awkward as Mia.  The only bright side in her life right now comes from her secret admirer, who Mia desperately hopes is Michael Moscovitz, Lilly’s brother and her crush since grade school (she claims the Josh Richter crush was just a phase). Despite her efforts to discover the truth, her admirer refused to show himself until he damn well feels like it.

There is the normal amount of craziness in this volume: Mia is neurotic, Grandmere is entitled, Lily acts superior, Tina is obsessed, etc.  But it’s fun and goofy, overall a nice distraction and an extremely quick read.