Personal Rating: 4 Stars Goodreads Rating: 4.05 Content Rating: Light PG-13 Once upon a time, two best friends created a princess together. Libby drew the pictures, May wrote the tales, and their heroine, Princess X, slayed all the dragons and scaled all the mountains their imaginations could conjure. Once upon a few years later, Libby was in the car with her mom, driving across the Ballard Bridge on a rainy night. When the car went over the side, Libby passed away, and Princess X died with her. Once upon a now: May is sixteen and lonely, wandering the streets of Seattle, when she sees a sticker slapped in a corner window. Princess X? When May looks around, she sees the Princess everywhere: Stickers. Patches. Graffiti. There's an entire underground culture, focused around a webcomic at IAmPrincessX.com. The more May explores the webcomic, the more she sees disturbing similarities between Libby's story and Princess X online. And that means that only one person could have started this phenomenon---her best friend, Libby, who lives. (goodreads.com) In my family I definitely read the most… unless someone is just secretly reading all of the books from my shelves and I don’t know about it or they just have a massive library of their own hidden somewhere. But as far as I know I read the most out of everyone in my immediate family. However, that doesn’t mean that the others don’t read. I like to think we are a pretty literary family. Why am I talking about my family? Because my sister is the one who recommended today’s book to me! SHOUT OUT TO MY SISTER! HI MORIAH! Things you should know about my sister:
Knowing all of this, it should come as no surprise that she picked up I Am Princess X from our local library. This story, which is told with a combination of text and the webcomic that the story is about, has a lot of superhero vibe to it. As you can probably tell from my rating of this book, I’m really glad that my sister read it and let me read it after her. I thoroughly enjoyed both the story and the fun purple-tinted art. Based off my last review, you can probably figure out that I’ve come full circle as far as like illustrations in my books. When I was a kid and couldn’t actually understand written words I preferred books with lots of beautiful, well thought out pictures. Then, when I learned how to read better I preferred the words over the images. But now I’m finding that I’m really, really enjoying seeing illustrations in books again. I don’t know what it is but I love storytelling with artwork thrown in. It’s fantastic. I’m getting off topic. Let’s talk about Princess X. I really liked the premise of this book and the execution of the premise worked really well in my opinion. I loved how it kept it current with webcomics and online stuff. I also like how it had people create fanart merch for Princess X because, let’s be honest, if something online really got that popular you know there would be fanart. Not sure if people would buy the stickers and then paste them all over town, but that worked well for the plot so I’m not arguing. The characters were really great. May was fun, likeable, and interesting. She was determined and brave and I like how she was kind of sparked from her ordinary boring life to a courageous hero when she had the slightest suspicion that her friend might still be alive. Trick was fun too, and I think he was very realistically written. He was an annoying teenage boy without being so irritating that I hated him and he reacted in reasonable ways to the events of the story. Plus, his online handle was lame, which I think we can all find relatable. I don’t want to talk about too many other characters because I don’t want to spoil anything, but I liked pretty much everyone except the villain. Speaking of the villain: I wish we had gotten to talk to him a little bit more. We knew his motives and everything, but something in me wanted him to explain himself. Aren’t bad guys usually supposed to have a chance to justify their actions? Even if they are unjustifiable. And maybe he knew that. Maybe that’s why we couldn’t have him speak any more than he did. Because even he knows how bad he is. Still, I would have liked to see a little more of him either in the main story or in the webcomic part. The plot wrapped itself up very neatly, which was satisfying since it’s a stand alone. It might have been a little too neat, because something about it just felt like it was finished really quickly and didn’t leave me much to think about. Personally, I think a book should leave you with a little to consider and I could see an attempt at that, but the browser that is my brain was happy to just close down the tab of this story as soon as I closed the book. Does that make sense? Like it finished so perfectly that I’m afraid it won’t leave a big impression. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the ending! I really liked it! I’m just not sure it was the best that it could have been or that other, more critical readers, will like it. I am really glad that my sister recommended this book, though as I had a lot of fun reading it! I’ll have to take her book recs more often. Hopefully you enjoyed this review and maybe it will convince you to read a really fun book about a princess who wields a sword… and sometimes a multitool. Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23399273-i-am-princess-x
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