Enchanted, by Alethea Kontis

I’ll end the week with an entertaining retelling of the Frog Prince fairytale.

You know the story, right? A lovely girl befriends a frog.  She kisses the frog; he turns into a prince; and they all live happily ever after.

Not in this version. Yes, the beautiful and smart girl, Sunday Woodcutter, meets a talking frog by a pond in the woods.  They become friends.  And yes, she kisses him to see what would happen.  Hours later, when the frog finally turns into a man, Rumbold realizes he is the one person Sunday would never want to see again.  He is the Crown Prince of Arilland, the man responsible for her beloved brother’s death.

Prince Rumbold can’t stop thinking about Sunday, though.  He decides to hold three balls and invite all the women in the country to attend so he has a chance to woo Sunday as a man.  But the balls don’t go exactly as planned.  Spells and secrets need to be revealed before the story can end in the expected happily ever after.

The author cleverly weaves glimpses of other fairy tales throughout the book–one sister has a story similar to Cinderella, another tragically dies from magical dancing shoes, her brother trades a cow for some beans, and there is a giant–it was worth turning the pages just to see who would turn up next and how the “real” story would unfold.

Kontis has written a second in the Woodcutter sisters series, Hero, about the adventures of Saturday.  I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next in this delightful, magical world.

Check the WRL catalog for Enchanted