Entwined

by Heather Dixon

Grade: Good
Story: The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Plus an Evil King, a Bertie Wooster, a Family Tragedy, a set of Magic Sugar Tongs, and Lots and Lots of Dancing.

Review: I almost, almost stopped reading this one on page 18. I was annoyed by the meeting between Azalea and her love interest, as seems to happen so often with me. And then I stop and never finish.
BUT. But, but, but! I may, perhaps, just maybe, be getting over my terrible inability! Because THIS time, I continued! I looked at the back, confirmed to myself that he was the love interest, sighed to myself and thought "Oh well, there goes another awesome book back to the library simply because I have an issue with Romance." But then something came over me, and I decided I did not care. I read on! In fact, I read through almost all my classes (not usually recommended, that) and finished less than 24 hours after I started.

Now before you get too excited and think that I am over my Romance issues forever, it is important to observe a few points:
--The Romance was really quite minimal. In fact, I'm almost glad I didn't love it, because perhaps if I did like it I would have been disappointed. Not that  in the past even minimal Romance hasn't stopped me from reading books before, because it most certainly has.
--However many times his eyes were described (which usually bothers me), he was never described as "sexy" or "incredibly handsome" or any such thing. In fact, the person who was MOST described thusly was...well, spoilers. Anyway, so all the descriptions of him really seemed more like it was simply Azalea falling in love, as opposed to the way so many books seem to be trying to force ME to fall in love as well. And I DO NOT want to love the hero of a book unless I really like him, and not just his sexy eyes. Anyway.
--There were sisters. 11 of them. (This IS the Twelve Dancing Princesses, after all, and in my opinion, you should always try to actually have twelve of them, and not just some "large" number like...5.) And some of them have Romances of their own. Romances that I felt quite free to love very much. If this were not the case, I probably would have put down the book.

And besides all this, there's simply the fact that this was really a story about a family. And they seemed like a family. The sisters were adorable, and I love siblings.

(Plus Lord Teddie = Bertie Wooster. Ha ha!)