Look out, Buffy, there's a new Slayer in town. And it's... Sleeping Beauty? 0_o
Princess Lucette of Xandria was given a meeting among kingdoms in her honor when she was born. Her name was chosen by the Faerie Queen, to her mother's distaste. I get that the queen was young and didn't know a lot about politics, but man, she was kind of a b*tch... To show that, the queen of the vampires shows up to the party, angry that she wasn't invited by the queen of Xandria, who is extremely racist against vampires. As punishment, she takes it out on Lucette and curses her. Once Lucette is sixteen, and if she ever pricks her finger on anything, the entire kingdom of Xandria will be affected.
After that escapade, Lucette grows up to be sheltered. And I mean sheltered - like, she can't even open a door and can only write with crayons, even with gloves on. Her dad wants her to be protected from everything, while her mom wants her to have some freedom in life, and this throws some turmoil into the family. Lucette isn't told about the curse until she's older, which I thought was odd that they didn't inform her sooner. And here is where the choices the reader makes can come into play.
The choices in this book are pretty substantial. While in Cinderella the choices were more of which path, right or left, this book takes a more emotional toll on the character (i.e, choose between mom and dad). I thought that was a nice touch.
Eventually, likely no matter what choices you make, Lucette does wind up pricking her finger. The impact of the curse is that Lucette falls into a deep sleeping during the day, only to wake at night and be alone (minus the vampires out to kill her), while the entire kingdom is sleeping at night. Lucette does wind up making a friend in Alex, a vampire, who agrees to help her.
The one thing that irked me in this story was the romance. You have Alex, who is really nice, although can be aggressive, and you have Tristan, who trained Lucette to be a Slayer as a child. I didn't like Tristan. At all. In fact, I chose the option in the story where you got to send him away because I wanted her to be with Alex, but nooo, Tristan comes back like a stubborn itch. Here's my feelings on it:
(That's right, Wickedreaders has comics. What now??)
All in all, this was an enjoyable and easy read. I think I may have liked the Cinderella story better, but this book definitely gets near a 4-star rating.
Ta ta for now!
- Julia :)
