Rating: 2 1/2 stars

I hate to say it, but Calypso is not a particularly intelligent character in the second half of A Royal Match (aka Stealing Princes) and that, unfortunately, overshadows all her marvelousness from the first half (aka Pulling Princes). She’s a teenager, she’s bound to make mistakes, but really? But let me rewind…

In Pulling Princes, Calypso just wants to fit in. She’s been at St. Augustine’s for a few terms and has made one good friend, Star. The two of them are inseparable – both are stars of the fencing team and delight in being different than all the other girls. Or at least Star does. Calypso wants to be just like the other girls and in an effort to meet that goal, she convinces her mother’s PA (production assistant) to be her fake boyfriend. This little white lie, in conjunction with being assigned to room with the most popular girl in her year, catapults Calypso into the in-crowd.

And she uses her power for good! When punished for a food fight, she and her new friends turn their punishment into a charity project, creating their own literary circle and subsequent magazine that they sell to raise money for a good cause. Along the way, Calypso meets Prince Freddie in the fencing world and he is impressed by her skill and respects her (important! this changes later) and they wind up kissing at a party that one of the unhappy formerly popular girls tries to prevent Calypso from attending. Things go south when said girl snaps a picture and sells it to the paparazzi. Problem #1: The whole plot is about Calypso and Freddie and Freddie is barely in the book!

The second problem arrives in the second half, Stealing Princes. Calypso gets a big head (for some odd reason) and alienates all of her friends and starts to trust the same girl that spent the whole first half trying to sabotage her! Calypso can’t seem to act like a decent human being to save her life. While the whole story is about teenage girls, and yes, they can be quite evil at times, it’s as if Calypso pulls a 180 and suddenly nothing makes sense anymore. I don’t have the interest level required to even continue to read the series. Sorry Calypso, you don’t deserve Freddie (who is, once again, noticeably absent for most of the book). ( )

This was more young adult than I realized but even this book had a tendency to over use the concept of teens only thinking of themselves. Initially liked the idea of an American girl trying to fit into a high class English boarding school. The idea of wanting to date a prince added to it. The bitchyness of the girls became too repetitive, every misbehavior that they could do was done. Glad to find that Calypso was able to find the good in most of the girls there. Liked the idea for raising money for charity. ( )

This includes the first 2 out of 4 books in the Calypso Chronicles which is a series about a girl named Calypso Kelly who is an American teenager attending boarding school in England. She yearns to be popular and gets just that when the heir to the throne, Prince Freddie, takes interest in her. A picture of them kissing ends up in the tabloids which causes big problems for both. Calypso is able to tackle the disaster and hopes that her second term (semester) at school will be better. But Honey O’Hare, her nemesis as well as the reason her picture ended up in the trashy magazines in the first place, has different plans. She turns most of Calypso’s friends against her in the hopes of pushing them, as well as Freddie, away.

I was actually so excited to read this because it sounded really cute and fun from the synopsis, but it just wasn’t. There were so many good ideas in this book and it really had the potential to be great. The plot just seemed to jump from one event to another randomly. I think if each book had been longer this wouldn’t have happened and it wouldn’t have been so confusing.

The characters were also problematic for me. It might just have been me, but they felt ridiculously immature for 14-15 year olds. And obviously I wasn’t expecting them to act like they were 20, but the only thing they ever talked about was pulling boys (the British equivalent of making out). Well, that and their pet bunnies.

Despite how long this is, I finished it rather quickly but only because I couldn’t wait to get it over with. Like I said, it had potential, I just don’t think it was executed well. ( )