After waiting almost two years, Princess Amelia Thermopolis of Genovia will wear her tiara for the last time in Forever Princess,"" the tenth and final installment of Meg Cabot's bestselling ""Princess Diaries"" series. True to the name of the series, each book is written in diary form from the perspective of everyday teenager Mia Thermopolis, who also happens to be the sole princess to the small European country of Genovia.
All ten books cover Mia's journey through high school, with ""Forever Princess"" covering the final weeks of her senior year.
After four years of craziness, it seems like Mia's life is finally going great: she aced her senior project (a 400-page romance novel called ""Ransom my Heart""), she got into the college of her choice, and she has the sweetest most perfect boyfriend. With graduation around the corner, Mia can finally escape the evil confines of high school,
From an outward glance, everything seems to be going perfect for the future ruler, but, in reality, it is anything but. Sure, she wrote a novel, but no one seems to appreciate her hard work, or even care. Colleges only accepted her because she is a princess, she is still not on speaking terms with her ex-best friend (the crazy radical, Lilly) and her relationship with her seemingly perfect boyfriend is in jeopardy, since her ex-boyfriend Michael, who she is still madly in love with, returns from Japan and wants to hang out.
These sound like your normal, teenage girl problems that any girl can handle, but in true Mia fashion, she is able to take a simple situation and, with her naive overreactions and outrageous outbursts, create comedic chaos.
Jumping from Mia's sophomore year (book nine) to the end of her senior year was a risky move by Cabot, but one that paid off. Cabot is able to achieve a balance between the old, awkward Mia that we have come to love - and sometimes want to shake because of her stupidity in easily answered situations - and a new, more mature Mia who is new and unpredictable to old readers. After nine books of the same, typically teenage Mia, it is refreshing to see her use her brain for more than just sarcasm and pop culture references.
Written from the perspective of a slightly crazed 17-year-old high school girl, the writing is not exactly profound, but keeps you entertained with its in-the-moment urgency since it is written while the problems are occurring (usually from the bathroom). This book can be an eye roller with its cliché problems and girl talk, but the fun of the book is how Mia and her friends handle each of these normal situations in unexpected ways.
The writing is witty and fun, but the humor is really only appreciated by teenage girls who have been in those crazy high school, boy-trouble situations (sorry boys). True, the books in ""The Princess Diaries"" series are definite guilty-pleasure reads, but ones all girls could appreciate and then laugh about how ridiculous we were in high school.
