The Princess Blog

I'm taking a short break from my many To Win a Dark Heart ARCs to draw attention to another multi-author series of dual retellings releasing around the same time. Like To Win a Dark Heart, the Displaced Fairytales series  combines characters from two different fairy tales to create a new story. The only difference is that this time, the heroes get together instead of the villains. There are eight books in all, and they sound amazing! The first ARC I received from this series is Burning Snow  by Abigail Manning , which combines "The Little Match Girl" with a gender-bent version of "The Snow Queen."  I've devoured every book I've read from Abigail Manning so far , so I couldn't wait to dive into this one. Princess Safara has no idea what she's in for when she enters a marriage alliance with Prince Blamore. One broken mirror later, their kingdoms are cursed with an endless winter and a deadly disease plaguing the land by burning a special type o...

Falling for the Crystal Fae  by Anabelle Raven  is the most recent ARC I read from To Win a Dark Heart , placing me about halfway through this multi-author series. So far, every book has been a completely different experience, even though they all follow the same format of combining villains from two different fairy tales. This book combines the villains from "Aladdin" and "The Snow Queen" in an original fae fantasy realm. It takes place after their classic tales have completed, making it an original story about two villains on a quest for revenge against the heroes who took away their happy endings. The story begins similarly to Once Upon a Time in Wonderland , in which the female lead, Khiona, finds a lamp with a handsome genie inside, who offers her anything her heart desires. She agrees to free Andar, the genie, in exchange for a chance at revenge against the people who overthrew her. Andar has experience with overthrowing those in power since he once tried to...

The latest princess movie on Netflix is inspired by an old Japanese legend, but it isn't a direct retelling \like The Tale of Princess Kaguya . Instead, Cosmic Princess Kaguya  takes place in a futuristic world where most young people are obsessed with a popular virtual reality game, similar to the anime movie  Belle . It also follows the recent trope of modern musicals like  Six  and Between the Lines  of taking back the narrative by attempting to give Kaguya a happier ending than she had in the fairy tale. Many aspects of the movie are fun and interesting, but it tends to jump around between too many different ideas. Cosmic Princess Kaguya  tells the story of Iroha, a teenage girl whose mother all but abandoned her, leaving her to grow up quickly at a young age. When she finds a baby trapped in a utility pole, she struggles with the decision to take it in or bring it to the police. The baby magically grows into a preteen overnight and bonds with Iroha, wh...

Falling for the Trickster  by Lucy Tempest was the seventh or eighth ARC I received from To Win a Dark Heart , a multi-author series of villainous fairy tale retellings. When I realized it was the first in the series and released this weekend, I bumped it up on my list. This is the perfect book to kick off the series since it directly follows the premise of combining two fairy tales and bringing two villains together without overcomplicating it by adding  additional layers . The book is a retelling of "Rumpelstiltskin" and "The Goose Girl" with a heavier focus on "Rumpelstiltskin." It is a swoony fairy tale romance with relatable characters that takes place in a whimsical world of humans and fae . Ottoline was frustrated by her life of servitude to the spoiled Princess Gertrude, who mistreated her so badly that a fae noble took pity on her. Roderick granted Ottoline the power to impersonate Princess Gertrude just in time to meet her betrothed, a prince ...

Among the ARCs I've read so far in To Win a Dark Heart , Falling for the Pirate  by Nicki Chapelway was the most surprising. This book subverted all my expectations of this multi-author series of dual villainous fairy tale retellings and gave me something I rarely see in this genre. It reads like a modern isekai show , in which the protagonists are regular people who are reborn as fictitious characters in a story they are somewhat familiar with. In this case, it happens to be a story that one of them wrote. This is a plot frequently used in anime, most recently with last season's The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess , but I don't see it as often in fairy tale retellings , and especially wasn't expecting it from this series, which already contains several unique features. Vera is a struggling screenwriter who just sold an edgy version of "The Little Mermaid"  that crosses over with Peter Pan  in the trend-setting style of  Once Upon a Time . Vera...

After the massive Snow White  debacle , Disney was said to have put their future live-action remakes on hold , particularly one they were planning of the 2010 animated classic, Tangled . That plan didn't last long. It was only a few short months later that casting for the film began. Earlier this week, the official announcement was made  that the auditions were complete, and Teagan Croft  and Milo Manheim  were selected to play Rapunzel and Flynn Rider/Eugene, respectively. These two actors certainly resemble their animated counterparts and are safer choices than the diversity castings for The Little Mermaid   and Snow White , which resulted in much controversy despite both actresses giving the roles their all. Still, should this movie even be made ? I get it. Sixteen years is long enough for a child to become an adult, and yet the animated version of Tangled  still feels fresh in recent memory. Maybe it's because it never really faded away, being heavily...

Disney Jr. has been sharing sporadic updates on their social media  to remind us that the upcoming Sofia the First sequel series, Royal Magic , is set to debut later this year. The frustrating part is that they are keeping the project very much under wraps, avoiding any artwork, plot, or production details, and focusing instead on nostalgic clips of the original show. This makes fans hungry for more information, causing them to turn to less reliable sources for any nugget of hype they can find. The Disney fan insiders delivered these coveted nuggets with The Disney Scope: Magic at a Glance , a Discord panel, which revealed some early leaks of Sofia's new design, along with potential new character and plot information about the upcoming show. Since this is not an official press release, all of this information should be taken with a grain of salt, much like the Mexican Sleeping Beauty project . Sofia fans had a lot to say about this first look at the sequel series redesign shared o...

I have now received ARCs for just about every book in To Win a Dark Heart , a multi-author series of villainous fairy tale retellings. Among the ones I've read so far, Falling for the Mad King  by Sydney Winward is my favorite. This book does an excellent job of bringing two troubled souls together to improve each other's lives for the better with a touch of whimsy and magic. The book combines Alice in Wonderland  with "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," two stories that often lack clearly defined villains, allowing the author to create her own protagonists. Parts of it resembled Once Upon a Time in Wonderland , one of my favorite romantic TV shows of all time, but it is very much an original story. Falling for the Mad King  takes place primarily in Wonderland and introduces a villainous incarnation of Alice. The book follows the story of Rylan, the Mad King, an original character whose personality is a mix between the Mad Hatter and Queen of Hearts, leaning more towa...

Many new anime series come in or go out with a bang. The Magical Fated Princess: Who Made Me a Princess , which released its final episode on Crunchyroll yesterday, is not one of them. Based on a Korean manhwa , the series was produced by a Chinese studio and flew by like a whisper on a stray breeze, barely noticed by the anime fan community. It boasts beautiful, feminine character designs and takes place in a magical world, but the story leaves much to be desired. According to fan commentary , important elements were missing from the original source material, making this adaptation lackluster. Still, the series brings some unique concepts to the table as far as princess content goes, such as focusing more on the father/daughter relationship than on romance. Who Made Me a Princess is the story of Athanasia (Who else read that as Anastasia at first?), a princess who has been reincarnated to repeat her life in the footsteps  a very tired anime trope  that has been used in drove...

Falling for the Doomed Bride  by C.K. Beggan is the second of many ARCs I received from the villainous multi-author series, To Win a Dark Heart , which will be the primary focus of my blog posts over the next few months. The book contains a crossover of "Sleeping Beauty" and "Bluebeard,"  though it uses these stories as background dressing for the main plot, which reads like an adaptation of Pirates of the Caribbean . I personally have never understood the appeal of glorifying medieval seafaring criminals, but fans of the Pirates of the Caribbean  movies will likely enjoy it. Both protagonists are presented on the morally gray side of the spectrum rather than misunderstood , which is perfectly acceptable for a villainous retelling, though not always the most relatable choice. Although neither "Sleeping Beauty" nor "Bluebeard" took place on a ship, this book makes it work by making these fairy tales the building blocks for a seafaring adventure...

Falling for the Sorcerer  by Jes Drew  is the first of many ARCs I received last week from the new multi-author series of villainous retellings, To Win a Dark Heart . I will be reviewing these books in the order they were received, so expect to see a lot of reviews from this series on here in the coming weeks. Each book in To Win a Dark Heart contains a romance between two different fairy tale villains. In these books, the villains are misunderstood and not truly evil. Falling for the Sorcerer  combines "Swan Lake" and "Rapunzel,"  introducing nicer versions of Gothel and Rothbart, whose stories differ greatly from their wicked counterparts. It's a great book for older readers who find fairy tale heroes difficult to relate to due to their age. Forget everything you know about the stories of "Swan Lake" and "Rapunzel" because this book takes both in a completely new direction. Falling for the Sorcerer  is a second-chance romance about two wor...

The holiday season  is upon us, which means it's almost time to start a new year filled with new princess content. Within the past few weeks, there has been a slew of announcements regarding upcoming princess properties, and very few of these came from Disney. Netflix is currently the best place for original animated content . They have at least two new animated princess movies coming out in 2026. On the gamer front, a trailer was recently released for a tie-in video game of the new Winx Club reboot . The upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie has also been confirmed to introduce a popular princess from the franchise who has yet to make her theatrical debut. Let's dive into a new year of princesses. Last week, Netflix released the first screenshot from Steps , a fractured retelling of "Cinderella" focusing on one of the ugly stepsisters . Although a similar made-for-TV movie came out in 2002 based on the Gregory Maguire novel, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister , this ada...

As promised in my review of the Disney Magic  cruise ship, I am taking the time to write a full review of Twice Charmed , the long-running "Cinderella" musical that is exclusive to the Disney Magic and serves as the inspiration for the 2007 direct-to-DVD sequel, Cinderella III: A Twist in Time . Though many people are familiar with Cinderella III  since the DVD was more accessible to the public, Twice Charmed predates it by two years and contains many key differences from the film, including original songs and an original character, Franco, the wicked Fairy Godfather to Lady Tremaine. While the plot of Lady Tremaine using magic to turn back time so Prince Charming will choose one of her daughters resembles the animated sequel, the stage show is an entirely different experience that takes full advantage of its live medium. The show begins with the same projection technology that Disney has been using for all their live shows for the past decade or so. An image of a storybook...

There are times when we can all use a little magic in our lives. For me, that was midway through 2025, when I booked a Very Merrytime cruise on the Disney Magic , which set sail earlier this week. This was my second Disney cruise after having the most amazing time on the Wish  a couple of years ago. Unlike the Wish, which was the newest ship at the time (though it isn't anymore), the Magic is the first and oldest ship in Disney's fleet. Still, there were many similarities between the two, which made me feel like an experienced Disney cruiser. Since it was my second time sailing with Disney, I was automatically inducted into their Castaway Club, which provided advance booking perks and a free tote bag and set of room key lanyards. When I first booked this cruise, I didn't know much about what to expect except aside from the magical experience I had on the Wish, and that was enough for me. Imagine my joy upon learning that, like the Wish, this ship features two princess stage...