Title: Paper Princess

Author: Erin Watt (Jen Frederick & Elle Kennedy)

Rating: 5 Stars

Reviewer: Melinda

This book…this freaking book!! Jen Frederick announced that she and Elle Kennedy were combining their equally awesome author forces to write a young adult/new adult book about a month ago and since then I’ve been chomping at the bit waiting for the release because I knew it would be good and it was SO GOOD!

Both Jen and Elle have experience writing in partnerships with other people that I really love, plus I love their individual books, so I knew that I would enjoy this one as well. But I haven’t seen either of them write anything in a younger genre like this – which was actually why the authors chose to use a pseudonym. Paper Princess isn’t as adult as both of their regular books are and they didn’t want to their regular fans to get into the book and get disappointed.

This book is filled with the high drama, which with this genre and synopsis was something I was prepared for. Ella’s been on her own since her mother died and has tons of secrets she’s hiding from the world. When a guardian she’s never met much less heard of shows her life has to change completely once again because she’s forced to live with him and his 5 sons.

Somewhere along the line, I started thinking that if I just got through this bad experience, this bad day, that tomorrow I’d have something better, brighter, newer.
I still believe that. I still believe that there’s something good out there for me. I just have to keep going until my time comes.

Everyone has secrets to hide, which makes this book layered and interesting. It seems like at every turn I was questioning what the heck was going on with such-and-such character. The characters made me go through every single book emotion there is – anger, frustration, love, admiration, jealousy, and maybe even hatred for the ‘villains’ at the school. The villains in the school want to stop at nothing to take Ella down. I loved Ella because she is strong willed and even when she is breaking on the inside she doesn’t want to let the people who’ve broken her see that. She’s sarcastic and lashes out accidentally – so in essence not perfect, which is what I love in a character. At the same time there isn’t exactly a ‘hero’ per se because there are multiple options for heroes. The main two being Reed or Easton, with my vote going for Easton personally, but there is definitely a debate among the fans over who will be the actual hero.

The authors were very upfront about this book having a cliffhanger which I completely appreciated because I generally hate cliffhangers. I can’t stand not knowing what’s going to happen with characters! But knowing this ahead of time really made me be able to prepare. Also, the next book comes out in July, with the next one coming out 3 months later. I feel like I can handle that kind of wait time! Cliffhangers that have burned me in the past are ones that have been sprung on me out of nowhere and then I’ve had to wait a year for the next book, I cannot deal with that again. So – full disclosure – there’s a cliffhanger in this but I feel it’s worth it!