Review: Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George

Princess of the Midnight Ball is a retelling of the fairytale "The Twelve Dancing Princesses". I'm not familiar with the original tale, and I didn't look it up before reading the book (though I did just read the wikipedia page now).

This was a enjoyable young adult novel. It's not particularly special - in fact, I assumed it was pretty true to the original story because it didn't seem to go outside of what I'd expected - but it's well written and has likeable characters. I'm personally a bit disappointed in any retelling where the princess(es) don't save themselves these days... while one of the princesses does make an effort at one time, the story isn't really about them - it's about the male protagonist.

Having now read what the original tale is like, the author did change it so that the princesses weren't actually malicious (they're cursed instead - faerie tale rather than fairytale, if that makes sense). While that means you're cheering for everyone except the curser, I now can't help but feel like I would have been more excited to have read one where the princesses turned out to be the villains.