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Story #1 was fun but a throwaway on a background character; Story #2 was also fun but was just an excuse to combine the heroes from two other books; Story #3 was the standout for me; Story #4 was interesting but I think I read it somewhere before.
Jul. 13th, 2016
A gift for my daughter for her birthday. A little more focused than the other PiB books on pink princessy things and also presents, but really fun. I particularly liked the multicultural array of princesses attending the party. Princess Sneezewort's actions in Book 3 (which we read out of order, as it involves bunnies, and Easter comes before my daughter's July birthday) now have additional context, and I'm wondering if Book 4 will firm up her suspicions.
I first read this in 2008, but wanted to reread, as I seem to be working my way through all the Diana Wynne Jones books available through my library's Overdrive app, and I wanted to give this another chance in the context of the other Chrestomanci books. I definitely liked it a lot more now, though I wish Cat had trusted Chrestomanci more and Gwendolyn less. I was still sad he suffered so much, poor kid.
I thought I was reading this for the first time, but apparently I first read it ten years ago! And here I was thinking it seemed a little familiar just because I've read several of Albom's books. Well, this time around I think I liked it more; now that I'm older and a mother myself, I think both the protagonist and his mom were more relatable to me. Anyway, nowadays I will say without shame that I love Mitch Albom and his books make me cry, so that's something else that's changed from my original review, too.