BOOK REVIEW: The Wide Awake Princess by E.D. Baker

BOOK REVIEW: The Wide Awake Princess by E.D. Baker

Annie is the sister of Sleeping Beauty. To protect her from evil spells, a fairy casts a spell to make her impervious to magic. Therefore, she is not made beautiful by it and many look on her as plain or ugly. Everyone except the guard who joins her on an adventure to find a slew of princes to kiss her sister and wake her and the castle's inhabitants. Of course, the guard happens to be a prince in disguise.

From a multiple-book author (she wrote The Frog Princess, also) I expected more. The writing was subpar, redundant, and characters would jump from standing in the front of the castle entrance to sitting down at a table. I understand these errors happen when writing, but you expect them to be smoothed out by the time they're bound into a pretty little book. The story was okay. It didn't flow well and the characters seemed to make decisions to keep the story flowing instead of what would make sense. It lacked depth of the senses...I don't know if it was simplified because it's for younger readers, but I'd like to think I was smarter than that, even as an eight year old.

Overall the story was clean and appropriate. The protagonist is witty and there were parts that made me chuckle. I was annoyed at the story half the time yet I had to keep reading to find out what would happen. Which prince would wake her sister, if any? And props to Baker for creativity. Making a princess's sister the protagonist was ingenious. Twisting in different fairy tale characters made it exra fun. If only it were better written and edited. Still a fun, quick read for any age, rated G. I give it 3.8 stars.