'I hope with this painting that I can encourage people to not only strive to bring out the best in each other, but to explore how others can change them, and how we can all grow into better people for us having known them.'
I... I am not OK...
Let's start with the good stuff first.
It's not really relevant, but Princess at Heart is the first British publication I, from mainland Europe, have bought since Brexit has become a fact. And all went well, don't worry about it! No problems at all with customs or anything, it went just as quickly as usual.
Also, the dedication mentions Covid-19. This is the first mention I've seen of it in a book - wonder how many more will follow...
Something that struck me as well: This book is set around 2018-2019, apparently, and someone in this book is given a birth date in 2000. That... makes me feel old. It's one of those moments where you realise that time keeps on slippin' into the future, even in The Marvellous World of Books.
The cover didn't really speak to me as the other ones did, the first time I saw it online. However, sometimes it just doesn't come across as it does in print. When I held the book in my hands, I was awestruck, because the colours are truly beautiful. Well done!
The book starts off with a prologue from Ollie's point of view. Since I've always thought Ollie to be a bit of a superfluous character in the story, that didn't bode too well for me. However, he hardly is hardly present at all in the book. So: big 'oof'.
Book 5 - the next book - will be the last one in the series. And this book does feel like one in which the story is slowly but surely going towards the endgame. What that endgame will be like... Search me. I really haven't got a clue. Book 4 is also 'only' 320 pages long, but it's chock-full of... well, everything, really. Mysteries, excitement, emotions (I'll be getting to that in a bit), it's all in there.
Lottie and Ellie are two amazing characters, and I love them very much (despite some... things, which I'll be getting back to). Looking at where they've come from, the path they've taken, they're so different from when I first met them in Book 1. It's a marvel.
And now... The bad stuff. I have to warn you: It will be very long, it will be, in a way, intimate, there may be unmarked spoilers for the story, and it will probably sound rather incoherent at times. Now that that's out of the way, let's get to it.
I believe everyone has elements in stories that they love, and other ones that they loathe. The love triangle is one of the obvious ones, of course, but there are a lot more, and I'm going to talk about one of those here. Let me explain what this is about.
In book series, main characters that have never met one another are often thrown together in one big story. Along the way, they may learn that they are special, and they learn to appreciate one another, they become friends, or (sooner or later) something more. But after they become friends, and before the story ultimately finishes, there is often a period in which what they know gets turned upside down, and it has far-reaching consequences. Or, it may be that they start to understand that they are not the same after all, and that they don't know each other as well as they thought. What follows then is a part of the story where those main characters drift away from each other, very often because they don't understand, don't want to understand, what the problem is, and they somehow can't talk to each other about it, they keep secrets. It seems a bit weird writing this out, but you'll probably understand what I'm talking about, I hope. In trilogies, this is often in the second book, for example.
Here's the catch: I hate, loathe those storylines. I think it's terrible. On an abstract level, I get why the authors do that. It's because they want to deepen their characters, to make them more real, and I understand that, but I've always found it horrible to read about.
It was already visible in the previous book, The Lost Princess, that something was going on. Cracks started to appear in the relationship between Ellie and Lottie. And that storyline evolves further throughout Book 4. They don't talk to each other, they keep secrets from one another, they don't understand each other. For 320 pages long. Their storylines - of the two of them apart and together - went in a direction that, as a reader who has emotionally invested a lot in these characters, I found terrible. As a reader who wants character development and a good ending in Book 5, it would be amazing - but that happens on an abstract level, it's the emotional level that took over with me.
It made me sick. Literally. I know what you're thinking: That's not true, you're just overdoing it a bit right now, Tim. But I am being completely honest with you here. I read the first 240 pages in the afternoon, and afterward I hardly ate during dinner. I had no appetite at all, my stomach was upset, I couldn't stop thinking about what was happening, I felt tired. I was truly in a bad place for some time. On an emotional and relational level, this book is, if you ask me, very dark.
It would be easy to say that it's all, or mostly, Ellie's fault, but I believe that's just because you mostly follow the story through Lottie's eyes. And yes, Ellie does make some serious mistakes: She doesn't trust Lottie, she keeps too many important secrets, she does wrong things, she is cruel and dishonest. However, I would like to argue that Lottie is to blame equally badly: She too doesn't trust Ellie, keeps too many secrets, she is too scared to speak up, she does wrong things and she is dishonest as well.
I am not going to say that their relationship has evolved in an irrealistic way, because what would I know of it? Especially in a situation like this one. However, I do want to say that I think that their relationship's evolution is... horrible, on very many levels, and I had a lot of trouble getting through this book.
The book ends with a cliffhanger that (that much is clear) has been coming for a very long time. I don't know what to make of it - or rather, I don't know what that means for their relationship and story line. I don't have a clue how it's going to evolve from this point onwards. I'm just praying that, in the end, in Book 5, everything will turn out right. 'All's well that ends well,' they say, and I hope that will become truth as the story comes to a close. I hope that Ellie and Lottie will finally be able to talk to each other again, that they'll understand each other and be able to live with their differences and things they have in common.
Normally, when a new book in a series comes out, I re-read at least the previous book (sometimes the entire series), so everything is still fresh in my mind. I didn't do that this time. I don't think I can read Princess at Heart without knowing what comes next. I hope that everything will turn out all right in Book 5, and that I'll then be able to re-read all the books, including Book 4, because they I'll know that it will be fine and it will be less hard for me to struggle my way through it on an emotional level. But without that closure... I don't think I can take it.
I would like to end this entire explanation with a quote from the very first page of the book, something which is said by Ollie:
Lottie loved the storm because she said it was the start of something new - because no matter how violent the raging winds and rain, no matter how loud the thunder, a storm meant the tension would be released, that the earth would be fresh and cool once more.
I can only hope, deep in my heart, that Book 4 was that storm, and that it has now passed and the tension has been released. Because that would mean that Book 5 will indeed be fresh and cool, or at least have a fresh and cool ending. I could sure use it.
So you might wonder, if it made me feel so bad, why am I giving the book five stars? Because it clearly was a horrible experience for me, so shouldn't the book be bad?
The answer's very easy, really: Anyone who succeeds in making me feel as emotional as I am now, deserves five stars. It's really the highest praise you can get from me if you're writing a book, and it happens only very rarely. It doesn't matter if I feel 'bad' and if that makes the book 'bad', because in a weird way that I can't explain I do honestly think that it is bad... What does matter is that Glynn has succeeded in making me feel like this. That is why I am giving Princess at Heart five stars. This book went straight for and to my heart. I don't think I've ever felt so bad after reading a book, and that's a big compliment. Well done, Connie Glynn, although I do hope you'll give us a happy ending in Book 5. If you're not sure yet, let me tell you this: If these books are written to be like, and based on, fairy tales, it would only be fitting that The Rosewood Chronicles also ends with '... and they both live happily ever after.'
10+/10