While it's a little jarring to reexperience with Mia the early, confusing days of the pandemic, it's also fun to do so with a beloved character who feels like a friend. While I wouldn't want to have walked in Princess Mia's shoes with her responsibilities to the people of Genovia, her hope and vision make this story worth it.

Thank you Avon Harper Voyager, Avon Impulse for my advanced copy! All thoughts are my own.

I was very very excited to visit Genovia in this book. But ultimately, I think this is one piece of nostalgia I should have left in the past. Or at least just watched the movie. This book is fine, but I really didn’t enjoy reading it. I wasn’t charmed by the characters and felt annoyed and outraged more often than joyful. It does focus on the early days of the pandemic, but instead of being funny or endearing, I just found the characters insufferable.

Ultimately, the book is short and fun but I don’t think it was necessary for Princess Mia’s legacy.

Synopsis:

“During the Covid-19 pandemic, a section of the diary of Princess Mia Thermopolis of Genovia fell into the hands of Meg Cabot, the Princess’s royal biographer.

As reported in media outlets such as Entertainment Weekly, The Mary Sue, Refinery 29, Bustle, and more, from March until June of 2020, sixteen entries of the princess’s diary were leaked onto Ms. Cabot’s blog, to the delight of over a million fans.

In these entries, titled The Coronavirus Princess Diaries, the princess recorded her most heartfelt emotions while dealing with her husband’s quarantine after exposure to the virus; her personal (and political) battles while imposing health restrictions on her small European nation; life during lockdown (even in as idyllic a location as a palace on the Riviera); and of course, dealing with her demanding royal family, especially her grandmother.

Since then, readers have been clamoring for more chapters of Mia’s coronavirus diary . . . and here they are at last: The Quarantine Princess Diaries include not only the previously released entries (now edited and updated with new content), but two hundred more pages of entirely original, never-before-seen entries, including the princess’s worries over a possible royal affair; a showdown between Mia and Grandmère over the latter’s intended nuptials; the eventual development and distribution of a groundbreaking intranasal vaccine for every citizen in Genovia; and, as always, a royally happy ending.

After all we’ve been through, what could be more comforting for any lover of royal romance than snuggling up with a brand new installment of the diary of Mia Thermopolis, the princess who started it all?” —NetGalley

What I Liked:

The Nostalgia—I loved Meg Cabot when I was younger. She was absolutely part of my foundation as a reader. I was really excited to revisit Mia and her friends and family for this reason. But I think I remembered the books wildly differently…

What Didn’t Work:

The Overall Tone—The tone is pretty irreverent, which I wasn’t expecting. I will admit I didn’t read the blog posts Meg Cabot released early on in 2020 when everyone was joking about how Mia would handle the Pandemic in Genovia, so maybe this is what they were like. But I found it pretty two dimensional and frankly, annoying. There were also some words and phrases that made me cringe.

Immature Characters—I read The Princess Diaries: The Royal Wedding when it came out and really enjoyed it! I guess I thought that this would feel more like that…but I don’t think it did. Mia felt like she hadn’t grown up at all.

Lack of Plot—It felt like there was no direction in this book. Maybe that was the point, since we were all a little directionless in 2020, but from a reading perspective, it didn’t work.

Character Authenticity: 1/5 Spice Rating: N/A Overall Rating: 2/5

Content Warnings:

excessive alcohol use, Covid-19 pandemic

Do you love Princess Diaries, well she is back! :
Genovia - Princess Mia has returned in another installment, #12, in her reign as Princess of Genovia
Quarantine - so when the world comes down with Covid, she does what any concerned monarch would, and shuts it down
Leadership - but how does she handle people with adverse points of view while her husband works on a vaccine?

So I always forget when I read these books how much they differ from the movies, as they rank as some of my favs. And this book actually does poke fun at what they call the “unauthorized biopic” of Princess Mia’s life. I did like spending time with the characters again, but through a lot of the book I was hoping for something different then other books that came out about the same time period. As someone who lived through it, I wasn’t sure I was ready to read about it. But I did like a few interesting points made, and if you are truly a YOUNG adult, you probably will like it a lot.

The Princess Diaries books were some of my favorite books as a teenager. To this day, the movies are also some of my favorites. Needless to say, when I stumbled across this new book, I was pretty excited to check it out and had high expectations. I couldn't wait to see what Mia was up to these days and how she managed life through the pandemic.

Unfortunately, this one failed to live up to those expectations for me. I'm not sure if it's because my expectations were TOO high, or what happened, but I really just struggled to enjoy this. In part, maybe I'm just not quite ready to read about all things 2020... it's too soon, and I'm still not quite there yet. Maybe? But it also felt like Mia hadn't grown quite as much as I'd expected too. It's been a while since I've read the previous books, so I couldn't say for sure, but I just know that it didn't feel the same to me as those had been. I also think I must have missed a couple somewhere along the line (or my memory is just that bad) because there were some moments that confused me, that's for sure.

While this one wasn't for me, it was nice to go back and revisit an old friend. I might just go back and reread the earlier ones again instead.


**I received a complimentary copy for consideration. All thoughts are my own.

I have been a fan of Meg Cabot for most of my life now. The Quarantine Princess Diaries was a really fun way to catch up with Mia and friends (and I was impressed how many friends Cabot managed to squeeze into a fairly short book!) I will never pass up a chance to read more about the characters I grew up with. I think this may be the first book I've read that took place during the earliest days of covid-19, so there was definitely a bit of weirdness "going back" versus reading this on Cabot's website as events developed.

The only thing that I don't really buy here is Mia as a parent and, while that isn't the focus of the book for good reason, her voice still feels a bit like a teenager to me (and since Mia and I are approximately the same age, I can measure myself against her and I know how much has changed since then).

This was so much fun! I loved being back in the world of Genovia and Princess Mia. It was a fun and easy read! I would have liked more of Tina and Boris.

The Quarantine Princess Diaries is a part of the Princess Diaries series and as the name suggests, centers around the pandemic. When COVID-19 hits Genovia, Mia needs to figure out the best way to map the uncharted waters of ruling a country during the pandemic.

Let me start by saying I am not a fan of reading anything about the pandemic and yes, from the start I knew that is exactly what this was. After reading this, I can definitely say pandemic references and books are not for me, I lived it and I don’t want to relive it. With that being said, this was a good book and a great addition to the Princess Diaries series. It was hilariously funny how accurate this book is when describing people’s actions and reactions during the pandemic. (This won’t affect me, I’m young, I’m healthy. Everyone else should wear masks, but I don’t have to. And on and on.)

I guess what I’m trying to say is this was a good book and I did enjoy it, I’m just never going to be a fan of anything having to do with the pandemic. I did love reconnecting with the characters and seeing how they handled this trying situation.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book!

Here we are with Book 12 of the Princess Diaries with Mia facing the pandemic with her brilliant scientist husband, Michael, mother, father, and grandmother at her side–or sometimes in her way in The Quarantine Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot.

If you’re a fan of the series, you will most likely love this entry , which shows Mia trying to battle individuals regarding life over economy, social distancing, and isolating. (And, yes, it does feel very familiar.) Cabot, of course, has the benefit of hindsight, allowing Mia to make choices based on what did and didn’t work. A lot of the awfulness of the time is not in this book and shouldn’t be because that is not what this series is about. This is a feel good series. If, unfortunately, our princess heroine is shown to sometimes not have moved beyond her jealous high school self, this shows her insecurity and, I suppose, humanizes her. I would rather she accepted that Michael loves her fully, which would have shown growth and maturity, but there you go.

Obviously, this is a book about how fictional “haves” survived the pandemic, frequently with Mia downing wine at 11 am, predicting that the next book will probably be called: Rehab Princess. I was sad that Princess Mia had given up being a vegetarian/pescatarian because that seemed like an ideal she should have maintained and such an easy one to keep. But she does keep her friends and realizes just how important family and friends are. And maybe that’s the most important conclusion that the pandemic brought to us all.

A must for Princess Diaries aficionados, a maybe for all others.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Princess Mia is back - full of snark about her family while navigating 2020 in Genovia.

Having read all of the Princess Diaries many years ago, I was interested to see what was happening in Mia's life. Unfortunately this one was a bit flat and preachy. I found the diary excerpts fun when they appeared in Entertainment Weekly at the time but given the few years that have passed since then it's hard to go back and relive what everything was like just a few short years ago. While almost impossible to do at the time, the book may have been better if it had come out earlier. That being said, it was enjoyable to catch up with the other cast of characters to see what was happening.

Back when I was in college—I think I've told this story on Goodreads before, but it bears repeating—a new Princess Diaries book came out. I bought it, obviously, and during a slow moment in my geology lab, I slipped it out and started reading it, furtively, under the table. Not furtively enough: "What are you reading?" asked one of my tablemates. And so I had to sheepishly drag out The Princess Diaries, Book Whichever while the table burst into (friendly) laughter. "I thought it would be Jane Austen or something!" the tablemate said.

How far we've come: I'm in my 30s now and can't be bothered to be sheepish about whatever I choose to read (and anyway...e-readers for the win). But some things haven't changed, and I knew the second I saw this book that I'd be reading it as soon as humanly possible. How could I not? One must keep up with the world news, after all, and that includes the goings-on in Genovia.

In "The Quarantine Princess Diaries," Mia has settled into her role as Princess of Genovia, and everything is just ducky, from parenting her twins through their terrible twos to implementing a composting program in Genovia.

There's just one problem.

It's early 2020...and we all know what that means.

Now, Mia has grown a bit since the last book: she no longer compulsively checks the tabloids to see how she's faring in the tabloid sphere; she's relatively chill about the way she's raising her children; she understands that as a teenager she was "completely mentally unhinged" (loc. 153*). The last bit alone is a rather miraculous bit of self-awareness.

As the pandemic slides on, though, and Mia is separated from Michael (by which I mean: he is quarantining down the hall, and she sees him from the balcony at least three times a day), wine o'clock gets earlier and earlier and Mia faces pushback against border closures and mask mandates...mostly from directly within her own family.

This is a predictably fast read and also a predictably exhausting one. Grandmère is in her finest of fine forms (though, truly, I've never loved her more than when she quotes "Jane Eyre"), and between her and Mia's father and Mia herself, it seems a minor miracle that Genovia has yet to slide into anarchy. (This is, remember—see "Royal Wedding"—a country with no income tax, minimal business taxes, and not a single bookstore(!), but lots of beaches and bars and yachts. I'm not sure how any public services are paid for.) Mia seems to think that as a princess—*the* princess—the most valuable thing she can do with her time is volunteer at a nonprofit to help the poor (please note that in "Royal Wedding" she claimed that poverty and unemployment were at zero percent, so either Mia is delusional or things have gotten worse since she's been in charge. Either seems possible. Although, again, a zero-percent unemployment rate isn't actually a good thing, because it indicates stagnation) rather than, say, working on policies that will help lift the poor out of poverty and/or make sure they have necessary services in the meantime—

I'll stop. (I'm worse than Mia sometimes.) I won't even go on a rant about how Michael somehow, despite having no experience with vaccines, manages to produce one that is 99.9% effective(!) and Mia doesn't so much as *consider* making the details available to other countries, or her claim that the police in Genovia are universally beloved. I won't.

Will I now go back and reread all of the Princess Diaries books? Well. About that I make no promises...either way. I cannot in good conscience give this anything higher than three stars, because (I say cheerfully) Mia remains completely exhausting, and kind of an idiot, but you can bet your last dollar that if there is another of these in a few years it will be going on my to-read shelf just as fast as I can update that shelf. And I'd still put it in my bag and take it to geology lab, if push came to shove.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*I read a review copy, so quotes may not be final.

It was so nice to be back in Mia's world with this book. How would this cast of characters react to the recent real life pandemic? I enjoyed the overall mood of the book, as it has a generally happy ending. Unfortunately, for me, it was a little too soon to be reading a "fun" book about the pandemic, so I couldn't really get lost in the story. This might be a good book for me to revisit in the future when I'm a bit more removed from these very recent events. However, I still think it was a nice story, and it was fun to return to this world again.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is perhaps one of the most fun installments purely from a character perspective, even if it does focus on the bleakness of the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. These characters are already wacky, so to have them in lockdown together just makes it even more fun.
For one, Grandmere just steals the show here. She’s slowly gotten more and more dimensions and quirks over the course of the series, evolving from Mia’s no-nonsense grandmother to a more eccentric, if a bit out-of-touch elderly woman living a second youth. To see her get swept up in lust with a hot young thing, not to mention the ridiculous (if not exactly PC) things she says over the course of the book made her a bit of a riot. While I very much identified with Mia’s concern for her, I couldn’t help but wonder what she would do next.
As Mia became the reigning monarch in the previous installment, it gives the reader a front-row seat to all the things a world leader has to deal with during a crisis like this, and Meg Cabot makes it feel believable. I liked seeing how she tackled dissent from her citizens over masking (evolving towards the end to vaccine resistance), even if it felt a bit too close to home at times.
I love that Michael is helping to create a vaccine for the Genovian people, as it feels very much in-line with the type of work he was doing previously. And given it is fictional, I find it interesting that the text chose to go with an intranasal type, which does not currently exist.
I also enjoyed getting little updates on what everyone was up to, whether they played a major role on-page or not. Lilly thriving as a lawyer and helping to defend Mia and the Royal Family is super cool, and while I don’t remember this being established previously for her, I love that Tina is working as a medical resident on the front lines, even though it causes some friction in her romantic life.
And as a few years have passed since both the last installment of the main series and the Middle School Princess series, I enjoyed seeing how the characters established in those books have grown. While I still don’t know how I feel about how she’s represented, I liked seeing that Olivia is smart and one of the few people keeping her wits in this chaotic situation, as well as how her romance with Prince Khalil is developing.
All in all, I really enjoyed what this book brought to the table. While COVID in fiction can be a divisive topic, I feel this book did it in the best way: highlighting the complications of quarantine as a means to reinforce the ultimate message of unity in the face of struggle.

First line: Just got back from what was supposed to be a routine meeting with the prime minister about my composting program.

Summary: Crown Princess Mia Thermopolis of Genovia has just learned that the highly contagious coronavirus has arrived in Europe which leads her to make the decision to close Genovia’s borders, hotels and bars. And to make matters worse her husband, Michael, has put himself in to quarantine after visiting a patient who may have the new virus. With the changes to the country she has had to defend her decisions, even to members of her own family. As the pandemic progresses new challenges continue to arise but Mia stands up to them with the same strength and poise she is known for…right?

My Thoughts: I remember seeing this and getting excited to read another installment in the Princess Diaries series. It was one of the first audiobooks I remember checking out at the Derby Library when I started working here. While I found myself chuckling at some of Mia’s reactions and interactions I did not like it as much as I had hoped I would. I think the subject matter is just too recent and relatable. I just lived through the craziness of the pandemic and remember much of the drama associated with it. But it was nostalgic to be in Mia’s world again with all her friends and family I remember from the earlier books.

I can’t quite make up my mind on how to feel about this book. On the one hand, I’ll never say no to a chance to catch up with Mia. On the other hand, it’s a bit hard to blend the humor and ridiculousness of Mia’s overreactive tendencies with something as serious as the COVID-19 pandemic. At times, I felt the tone was a bit of a miss in this regard.

However, in terms of seeing what all of our favorite characters would be up to during the pandemic, this book fully delivers. It was great to see Grandmere partying on yachts and Lilly in all her lawyer glory, not to mention a few appearances from a now very old Fat Louie. The nostalgia factor definitely delivers here, and Cabot doesn’t miss a single character callback that I can think of, even if some get more page time than others.

This is a quick read and manages not to make thinking back on the quarantine days of the pandemic too painful. I’m glad I had the chance to read it and definitely recommend it to anyone who grew up with Princess Mia. Would I say this is the best entry point to new fans? Probably not. Would I personally still read a hundred more diary entries from Princess Mia? Almost definitely.

This feels a lot like the first year of the pandemic did. Nothing really happened and we realized just how awful some people in our lives are. At least this one got a much faster vaccine and a generally happier ending.

Fantastic book by Meg Cabot! I really enjoyed reading the blog posts so I was thrilled to see a full length book with them included. Another great Princess book!

I LOVED THIS!

First of all, how did I not even know that Meg Cabot wrote The Princess Diaries?! I had no idea!! I have so many books to go back and read!

I have obviously missed some of the story, but I loved following Mia and Michael as they navigate COVID in Genovia. I laughed out loud so many times (I’m looking at you, Clarisse and Dereck!) and just thoroughly enjoyed this story.

My review will be posted on my instagram (Bookmarkedfavs) tomorrow, 3/7!

Genovia has encountered Covid-19 and Princess Mia is in charge of making decisions to keep her country as safe as possible. I thought this was a fun fictional account of a few of the struggles we went through when Covid-19 hit the world. I enjoyed the interactions of the Royal family.

The Quarantine Princess Diaries details Princess Mia's experiences of leading Genovia during the early months of the COVID pandemic and her struggles of being in the sandwich generation, having twin toddlers at home, trying to manage her grandmother's ludicrous antics, encountering countless house guests, her growing wine addiction, and more.

I have not interacted with the Princess Diaries since the first book came out in 2001. and I thought it would make for a fun nostalgia read. I am sad to say that only one of us has matured in the past 22 years, and it's not Princess Mia. This could be ok as YA, but as adult fiction parts of it were downright painful to trudge through. Overall, I found the book very tedious, vapid, and irksome.

Thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager and NetGalley for gifting me with an ARC to review. Sadly, this was not the book for me.

This feels mean, but I don't really think this book was necessary. There was no character growth, and the pandemic was a predicable storyline. I didn't enjoy it.