Princess Princess Ever After

1.5/5.0: This was a disappointment. I thought it wouldn't be such a bothersome read. I see nothing incredibly horrific in this book- at least, nothing I'm not used to. I wanted to put the book down- even though it only takes a few minutes to read. Although it was cute, it felt underdeveloped, rushy, and cheesy. The over-saturation of the images hurt my eyes. The characters didn't have a lot of depth, and I went into it looking for that on my own mistake because I heard good things about Kay's other books. All I felt was that I was missing something. It reminds me of a book from the Scholastic Fair I would have bought as a child. But, I do not recommend it for children for one reason: the body image theme. I also think the author tried to make a stud out of Amira, but it did not come out right. Multiple scenes call Sadie fat. She is, at most, mid-sized. It feels like a characterization to fit a quota- or the author did not understand what they were doing while writing the story. Sadie's thin and tall sister called her the worst thing she could think of, which is being fat. When I see these things in books, I wonder what the author feels about the plus-size people around them. Without reversing the notion that her naturally occurring body is an insult to apologize for, you're not teaching impressionable readers the correct message. Do not teach people to apologize for taking up space. Dismissing that last execution to show viewers why her sister was wrong can and will hurt your readers- you need to be mindful of these things. It will only continue to push agendas that hurt people. It would be okay to acknowledge and accept that you are fat- if anything, that's what I want, for folks to learn to love themselves without slowly killing themselves to get to an impossible goal- but Sadie is not fat. If she is plus-size, God knows what I am. It just provides another body image for folks to obsess over. I sincerely hope that Kay has learned this for her other writings.