Review: Undercover Princess by Connie Glynn

When fairy tale obsessed Lottie Pumpkin starts at the infamous Rosewood Hall, she is not expecting to share a room with the Crown Princess of Maradova, Ellie Wolf. Due to a series of lies and coincidences, 14-year-old Lottie finds herself pretending to be the princess so that Ellie can live a more normal teenage life.

Lottie is thrust into the real world of royalty - a world filled with secrets, intrigue and betrayal. She must do everything she can to help Ellie keep her secret, but with school, the looming Maradovian ball and the mysterious new boy Jamie, she'll soon discover that reality doesn't always have the happily ever after you'd expect...

A thrilling world of parties, politics and bad ass princesses, this is the first book in the brand new series THE ROSEWOOD CHRONICLES.

This week and next week will be different from the usual Friday posts. I’m joining an ultimate book tour hosted by The Write Reads and Penguin to celebrate the last book in The Rosewood Chronicles series. They gave me a copy of the first and last book in the series in exchange for an honest review. Come back next week for the epic conclusion to a breathtaking YA fantasy series, Princess Ever After.

Undercover Princess was released in 2017 and I never heard about it before The Write Reads announced the tour. If I knew about it before, I would’ve read the whole series already. Even though I’m getting a little tired of all the fairy tale retellings, this one didn’t focus on them even though it’s clearly part of the world-building. I love boarding school stories, I love royalty, and the banter between the two girls, Ellie and Lottie, was fun to read about. It had all the right tropes. And all done well.

The Rosewood school is filled with mysteries and throughout the story, some are solved while others only raise more questions the more you get to know. It’s the little bits of lore that make you curious. And throughout it all, you will find magic. Not the firework type of magic but the subtle connections between things, like a thread of fate woven together.

The writing style fits the fast pace of the story. Glynn keeps the exposition to a minimum and has integrated most of it into Lottie discovering more about the school and her friends. By the end of the book, you’re still left with questions and while it’s not really a cliffhanger, it does hook you in for the next book.

I give Undercover Princess five stars. Extremely enjoyable, wonderous, and fast-paced. I recommend this to anyone who loved the Princess Diaries. I’d love to see Netflix pick this up for a series.