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| Book cover, courtesy of MegCabot.com |
When
I first selected "Princess on the Brink" by Meg Cabot, I wasn't aware
that it was a chapter in the Princess Diaries series, but it turns out it's
Volume 8, a fact not mentioned on the front cover of the copy I read. Astute
readers may remember some movie adaptations of this series Disney made in the
early 2000s.
"Princess
on the Brink" occurs during Princess Mia Thermopolis' junior year of high
school and deals with her relationship with her college-attending boyfriend
Michael. Michael, it turns out, has been given a generous sum of grant money
and an invitation to develop a full-scale model of his open heart surgery robot
on the condition that he has to move to Japan for over a year in order to build
the machine. Michael reveals that part of his eagerness to accept the
invitation is due to his uneasy feelings about his relationship with Mia: he
feels totally devoted to her but he is growing frustrated because she wants to
wait to have sex. Mia feels devastated by this revelation and begins thinking of
ways to get Michael to stay when her grandmother subtly gives her a suggestion:
Mia can take Michael to her grandmother's private suite and "Do It",
as Mia and her friends say, to keep him home. Things go wrong when she
reconsiders and breaks up with Michael over a misunderstanding.
This
is definitely an excellent book for teenage girls due to the discussion and
exploration of the pressure young women may feel to have sex during high
school. Young men may not find the book as a whole as interesting because it
primarily discusses the feelings young women have, but may find that aspect of
the book insightful when trying to understand and talk to women. I would
recommended reading the other books in the series first though, as
"Princess on the Brink" does not do an excellent job of reintroducing
the characters, seeming to rely on the reader being previously aware of who is
who to properly understand what is happening.
Fun fact: Meg Cabot wrote the two "Princess Diaries" movies into the book series, stating that within the story of the books, the movies were loosely based on Mia's life. Mia and her friends comment on how many liberties the filmmakers took and how inaccurate the movies are compared to Mia's "actual" life, especially the second movie, "Royal Entanglements," which was not based on any of the books.
For more information on all seventeen titles in the "Princess Diaries" series, please visit Meg Cabot's official website: http://www.megcabot.com/princessdiaries/index.php
Check out the trailer for "The Princess Diaries" movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8-RmatEn8M
Cabot, Meg. Princess on the Brink. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Print.
