Princess for Hire ~ Lindsey Leavitt review

Princess for Hire
Disney Hyperion CH
256 pages
March 16, 2010
Buy @ Amazon

Desi Bascomb is a fifteen-year-old living in boring Sproutsville, Idaho and working at Pets Charming. Instead of playing with cute puppies or kittens all day, Desi dresses up in a groundhog costume to help promote the store. Her work look doesn't exactly help her social standing which has taken a tumble since a particularly interesting falling out with her ex-BFF Celeste (read to find out about it).

Desi's just hoping for something to make her life more like Audrey Hepburn movie when she spies an interesting ad in the newspaper. Suddenly there's someone else in her bathroom. Desi's relaxing bubble bath is less relaxing and more confusing when Meredith, her green haired godmother of sorts shows up with some news. Turns out Desi has an ability that--with a little help--allows her to be a substitute for princesses who need a little break.

Soon, Desi's filling in for royal girls around the world and finding out that there's more to it than the fancy dresses and glamour that she expected.


The first installment in Linsdey Leavitt's new series is a whole lot of fun. Desi is a great main character who really is like no other character I can think of--but also not so different that it's annoying or weird. She's a quirky girl who doesn't like being like everyone else or following all of the rules, but still worries about how her social life. She's very well developed and it's her unique traits that really make her able to be a main character that is temporarily pretending to be other characters. The same is true of Meredith, as well and I really look forward to learning more about them in future books.

While Princess for Hire is a book that could almost be read by middle grade readers (it reads easily like that and doesn't contain the language or sex that would be a problem) it also works extremely well for the target YA readers and even adult readers.

There were times when some of the princesses' lives seemed almost. . . simply imagined, but I think it actually worked the longer I thought about it. What Desi did each time and how things worked for her, etc seemed to be the focus and everything was written very well for that.

Princess for Hire was not a very complicated book but it was super, super fun and cute and it was also one I found myself thinking about after it was over--which I always find to be an indicator of a great book (at least when they're good thoughts which these were!).

I definitely can't wait for more of the Princess for Hire books or from Lindsey Leavitt.


9/10

(This is a YA book but I'm tagging it MG too because I think MG readers could def. read it)