Frog Prince

Title: Fairy Tale Collection: Frog Prince
Author: Jenni James
Genre: Fairy Tale
Source: Amazon, ebook
Rating: 3 out of 5 paws


Prince Nolan has spent the last few years writing letters to his betrothed.  The image he gets of the woman is less than desirable, a spoiled princess.  He decides to best determine her quality he disguises himself as a frog and spends a month with her.  He needed to see who she was outside of written letters.  Could he actually marry such a woman?  The only way to break the spell prior to the 30 days is for Blythe to kiss him in his frog state.  Will Nolan learn to look past his judgements and find the woman beneath the letter.  The true merit to Blythe.

I am kind of on the fence with this one.  It was a lot shorter than I thought, more of a novella instead of a novel.  Maybe have it included in a bigger book with two other stories.  I have not read any of the other books in the series and I am on the fence if I do.  I have her Sleeping Beauty one to read in the future.  It is a quick read and while I am familiar with the classic Frog Prince tale, I never actually read it so I don't have much to compare this to as I have with some of the other re-tellings I have read.  There were a few things that seemed a little off center like being called to tea time with a triangle, is that how royalty were called to tea?  The way the do on ranches.  While the setting is in a European castle (we aren't given an idea of a country), but the names felt more American, more modern than something that would have fit the time period.


The characters don't grow, they don't evolve much.  We see Blythe being a sweet young woman teaching children in the village when there is no schoolteacher, but she still remains quick to judgement.  He doesn't evolve at all beyond realizing what a jerk he is and self centered he is.  He remains this way, and even tells her he is still the same.  From the first moment he believed she was different than she thought simply because she said she mimicked his letters and she was pretty.


The writing was fair enough, but at times it was confusing and the sentence structure didn't seem to flow well together.  Not that it was bad, but that it could have been written differently.  I think more younger audiences would like this, younger than the young adult market.  It definitely wasn't something a woman in her 30s would turn back to time and time again.  But it does make me want to read what the original story was like.