The Princess Diarist is as heartbreaking as it is heartwarming. Carrie Fisher dusted off her old diaries she wrote while filming the first Star Wars movie in 1977. Like everything in her life, she is brutally honest about what she saw and what she did and tells it with a biting sense of humor. Reading this a year after her untimely death is definitely after bittersweet as she was more or less correct about her own obituaries would say and what pictures they would use. The bulk of this memoir is focused on her affair with costar Harrison Ford, who as you know played Han Solo. Passages of her diary talks of her struggle to deal with the knowledge she is having an affair with a married costar and how she is falling in love with him even after telling herself that she wouldn’t. She also talks about how she struggled on the set, being told to lose weight and hours in hair and make up and keeping up the facade that she was more experienced than she actually was and of course the awkward promotion of the movie after the release. Carrie Fisher became Princess Leia in this diary and the transition wasn’t smooth. There was a lot bumps and bruises along the way but she eventually found peace with her alter ego. Honestly, we are lucky to have had Carrie as our Princess Leia and as our General Organa.
Kate and started this book by listening to it on audio book. Carrie reads the book while her daugher Billie Lourd reads her diary passages. I finished the book as an ebook and even though I was reading it instead of listening, I could hear her voice in my head. Ebook or audio book, Carrie distinctive voice came through.
So this book wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great either. It was more meh. I wanted to get into it but I just couldn’t. The pacing felt a little off to me. It started fast a little too fast for me. Ella’s mother has invented technology that allows people to relive their best memories and Ella has the ability to go into people’s minds and memories and look around their minds. She does this once and all of a sudden she’s an expert. She all of a sudden knows how to manipulate minds and search around strangers memories to find what she needs. Then pacing slows as we try to find out why she can’t remember the hot rebel, Jack and if he’s the terrorist or is it the government? After it moved too fast and then moved to slowly and then we finally got to the climax and was dragged out and then it was over. I was a little disappointed because I really loved Beth Revis’ Across the Universe series. This had so much potential to be a cool book that just never really got going.
Stevie Bell is starting at a new school. The mysterious and illustrious Ellingham Academy. Started by the infamous and rich Albert Ellingham the for the brightest students. Ellingham opened his school because he believed education was a game, a game that should be open to everyone so he made it tuition free. However, the history of Ellingham is tragic. Albert’s wife and Daughter are kidnapped and another student goes missing. While there was a confession and trial many things about the case have been left unsolved. Stevie is determined to solve the case. What Stevie didn’t count on was another student dying and a new mystery develops. Maureen does an excellent job setting up the past mystery with flashbacks and FBI transcripts and interweaving it with the present. At first it seemed that they cases were related and then they didn’t and then it did again. She always able to keep you on your toes. Stevie is ambitious. She knows that her interest are a bit unusual and it makes it hard for her to make friends. An issue that makes her anxious. As she tries to solve the mysterious before her she also must contend with school work, friendships and other relationships and forging your own path and not necessarily the path expected of you. I don’t think I have read a book depict anxiety in such a realistic way before. It really gets to the heart of how anxiety can paralyze a person but also shows how one can overcome those thoughts. Stevie is a great role model in that respect. The cast of characters around Stevie are interesting and I’m sure we will get more of them as the series progresses but I have to give a shout out to my boy Nate. He is the friend that everyone needs because he was willing to put himself in uncomfortable position because he saw Stevie was in a bad place and it was the push that Stevie needed. That’s a true friendship.
I feel like singing “Hello Dolly” except it is “Hello Holly” because she is back to where she belongs. No one writes about Fairies the way that Holly does. From the Spiderwick Chronicles to Modern Faerie Tales to Darkest Part of the Forest, her stories are a mixture of faerie lore with modern twists and not one is the same. The Cruel Prince is a new spin on the changeling story. Instead of a fairy leaving one of their off spring with humans to replace their own babies, we have twins Jude and Taryn who are stolen from their home after Madoc kills their parents. You see, Madoc is the general to the High King in Faerie and has an odd sense of honor. He married their mother and well she escaped, taking their baby, Vivi, with her to the Human world. Ten years later he finds her married to another and in a fit of rage kills both of them and then out of duty he takes all the kids back to Faerie and raises them as his own. Jude and Taryn were seven when they come to live and Faerie and have come to think about it as home despite living with their parents murderer. There are only two ways humans can join the court. They can either marry their way in or earn their way by becoming a knight. Taryn wants to the former and Jude the latter. In Jude’s quest to become a Knight she battles against the cruel and spoiled Prince Cardan and his viscous friends. Like any kid who has ever been bullied, you come to a point where you can no longer just sit by and let things happen and start fighting back. Jude is given the opportunity to prove herself to Cardan’s brother, Dain, who is expected to be named King by becoming one of his spies but this is Faerie and things don’t go the way you expect. The coronation didn’t go as planned, people revealed themselves to be not to who she thought them to be. Despite all the betrayals and double crosses, Jude takes the opportunity to make her own power play. I love Jude. She is smart and brave. Being a human growing up in Faerie is fraught with challenges but she has found ways to turn those disadvantages to her advantage and outsmarts them all. That being said, the real conflict as the series is going to be if she able to deliver on all the the promises she’s made. Will her allies continue to support her? And will Cardan and her ever hook up? Fans of Black’s Modern Faerie Tales trilogy will love the surprise cameos from Roiben and Kaye. This is a great start to another classic Holly black faerie tale.
2 Women, So Many Books 