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Well I loved this.

I had seen this book pop up a few months ago with starred reviews from a few different review journals and the moment I read "Princess Diaries for the next generation of girls" I was immediately hooked. I was lucky enough to get the audiobook for free and I have spend the last four days listening to it on my commute, at work, at home etc. utterly engrossed in Izumi and her story. This was exactly the kind of book I would have loved at age 15 and almost two decades later, I still enjoyed very, very much.

Was the story perfect? Nope. It does have a few plot holes or head scratches and the love story was very insta-love as can only be at age 18. But that is part of the reason I loved this book so much. It felt like a YA book, with a YA protagonist that wasn't perfect but was at her heart a good and kind soul and that is hard to find in YA literature. Plus all the secondary characters, including the parents, were great and present and Izzy finding out she was Japanese royalty got me interested enough in the Royal Family of Japan that I fell down the Google rabbit hole the other night trying to figure out their history/ line of succession (to sum it all up: they need to let females reign on the throne again. Case closed).

I see that the author has said book 2 is forthcoming which I am extremely excited for because I need to see more of Izumi and co. One book was not enough.