Found: Shapeshifting monster girl falls in love with a prince

I read this sometime between 2000 and 2002; it was a library book in my middle school and I don't think it was particularly new. A monster girl, last of her kind, sees a prince or some other noble young man wandering in the woods and falls in love with him. She turns into various animals to befriend him, including a deer. At the end he gets engaged to a human woman and the monster is brokenhearted; I think she considers shapeshifting and taking the human woman's place but decides not to. She MAY turn to stone, but I'm very unsure of that detail.

I could have sworn the monster girl was called a gremlin but I haven't gotten anywhere searching for that term, so maybe I'm remembering wrong. In her non-shapeshifted form I think she is mostly humanoid but she has long claws on her hands and feet.

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It sounds like a cross between one of the Graceling books and The Little Mermaid. But it doesn't ring a bell for me, sorry.

Your book is Sleep of Stone by Louise Cooper. I read this book vkose to around the same time as you, and I really liked it, too. Hope this helps you enjoy it again :)

Touchstone: Sleep of Stone

That's it, thank you so much!