| $@%&! level: Low “Bedroom” level: Low Violence level: Medium-Low (but more toward the Low side, I'd say) Back Cover: “But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day is blithe and bonny and good and gay. It isn't easy being Sunday's child, not when you're the rather overlooked and unhappy youngest sibling to sisters named for the other six days of the week. Sunday's only comfort is writing stories, although what she writes has a terrible tendency to come true. When Sunday meets an enchanted frog who asks about her stories, the two become friends. Soon that friendship deepens into something magical. One night, Sunday kisses her frog goodbye and leaves, not realizing that her love has transformed him back into Rumbold, the crown prince of Arilland—and a man Sunday's family despises. The prince returns to his castle, intent on making Sunday fall in love with him as the man he is, not the frog he was. But Sunday is not so easy to woo. How can she feel such a strange, strong attraction to this prince she barely knows? And what twisted secrets lie hidden in his past—and hers?” |
From a storyteller's point of view, the most impressive thing is just how many fairytales Alethea Kontis manages to fit into the one book. Some are just mentions, like Robin Hood, while others are obviously strong nods to the original, such as—obviously—the frog prince. She even got the old woman who lived in a shoe into it. I suspect it might be entertaining some time when I re-read it to make a record of all of them. I just love how she manages to weave them all together into a coherent tale that is recognizable and yet completely new.
So much for the storyteller's point of view. From the reader's point of view, she keeps you going with amusing anecdotes long enough for the love story to take hold. Once the love story is established, she throws in some mystery—a castle full of ghosts, a king with no name, a fairy godmother with her own agenda, and a prince with no memory. Then she catches you with the sinister, so that by figuring out the answer to the mystery, the deadly peril is revealed. After that, it's the inevitable race toward the climax (with a brief pause for the prince to lose his true love, pass out, and regain his memory). Sorry if that all sounds a bit vague, but I'm trying to tell the story without giving spoilers here. And I really don't want to spoil this story for you, because I liked it so much!
As the female lead in a love story, Sunday manages to be both silly in love and surprisingly well-grounded, while still having at least a passing acquaintance with real life teenager-hood. Rumbold was the more fascinating character, in my opinion, because he's actually many people all at once. He's a man who did things he's not proud of, who only sometimes remembers them, and is entirely changed from the man who did them, but needs to remember so that he can go on not being that man. Maybe it's confusing, but it's also redemptive and wonderful. I'm very glad to have found another good friend.