The description intrigued me as I hadn't seen a Princess and the Pea retelling before. Although, this book does not share too much with the original story.

A truth or dare game that has taken a turn. An emerald with a supernatural ability to take souls. A contemporary romance.

I love a good re-telling and this one was pretty fun! Maggie is with her friends and they give her a dare, seems like a typical time out with friends right? Well a dare turned into a night over and her friend basically going into thin air as if she never existed.....

I did like this re-telling a lot and Maggie character was done well and worth the read.

I didn't especially enjoy this book. The retelling genre is pretty wide, so there is much stiffer and well-thought-out competition.

An enjoyable fantasy fairy tale retelling of The Princess and the Pea. Very cleverly done with fantastic characters.

This is a retelling of the Princess and the Pea and I have never read a retelling for this fairytale before. It did keep my interest throughout the book so I ended up enjoying it.

All in all, "Emerald Bound" was a fun and interesting read. It is definitely a fresh take on the fable of The Princess and the Pea.
I did find it a bit hard to get into at first but once I was able to know who was who and what time period it was, it became a very entertaining read.
Maggie is with her friends when she is given a dare to spy on a family in the community. She (and her friends) end up being found out and are "invited" to spend the night at the house. When Maggie wakes in the morning, she finds that her friend Kate is missing and oddly, no one remembers Kate's existence at all. It is up to Maggie to find out what is going on and rescue her friend.
As I mentioned, it took a bit to get into but once I did the story just flowed beautifully. Definitely recommended for those who love a good YA fantasy read.
I received a free copy of this novel from the publishers via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

*The publisher provided this book in exchange for an honest review through NetGalley.*
A game of truth or dare ends up badly. When Maggie Rhodes and her friends break into the home of the hottest guy in school they are captured by him and his parents. They want something from them.
The family has to feed the emerald that gave origin to the princess and the pea. Only that the princess isn't a princess but Lindy, who was sold by her father to them. The peas are in truth precious stones obtained by draining young girl's lives. Only Lindy and now Maggie have escaped the emerald's curse. Even though Lindy still finds herself linked to her oppressors.
Now Maggie has to break the curse in order to save her friend Kate. Luckily she has Lindy's help and also the help of Garon, a handsome and mysterious stranger.
I found that, in the beginning, this book was very very hard to get into. It didn't seem to captivate my attention and curiosity. After awhile, I found that the more I dived into it, the more interesting it became. Knowing the characters and their struggles helped me to feel something for them and actually focus on the story itself.
The characters evolved naturally and didn't seem artificial. One thing that stands out in this book is how the story abruptly changes when ou least expect it. There are surprises all over the plot and it's amazing.
Never had I read something quite this unique. The fact that the author was able to take a widely known fairy tale and turn it into a whole new story was amazing. You can still see which parts come from the tale itself and the parts that were put in by the author but it actually feels real.
I cannot say that this was an amazing book but I can honestly say that it is a new and original concept that I enjoyed. If you like fantasy with a touch of romance and despair but that isn't mushy and with sprinkles of north European history then this is a book for you.

Honestly I just feel kind of apathetic toward this book. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t like it either.

There were a few minor things that mildly annoyed me, like the way Maggie kept thinking, “SAT word!” anytime she used a big word; I know she and her friends were studying for the SATs at the beginning, but she wouldn’t be thinking about SAT words while in danger. And the strange, proper way she talked while impersonating her friends’ mothers on the phone, as if that’s how adults talk. And the instalove (though she at least wasn’t talking about dying for him or anything that extreme).

I was also bothered by the way magic and fate seemed to play a large part in a rather deus ex machina way.

My biggest issue though was that there were a lot of things that just didn’t make sense. What exactly did the emerald do? Like, how were the Parkers using it to gain power? It did give them lots of gems, so I suppose it was helping them financially, but that’s another thing, the description Garon gave of how the emerald worked (he gave the example that feeding the gem a pine needle created a bunch of trees) didn’t at all match what the gem was doing in the present, which was *SPOILER ALERT* taking the life essence of girls and somehow using that to turn rocks into gems. *END SPOILER ALERT* Another thing, why would the Parkers all die at the end of the 400 years? The way the 400-year life extension was explained, I figured they would just go back to aging at the end of the 400 years. Not to mention the fact that it lasted 400 years seemed really random. Yet another thing, *SPOILER ALERT* I understand that they were able to undo the bindings that were made, but that doesn’t explain how they all traveled back in time all the way to before the Parkers even got the emerald, or why Lindy and Garon and Maggie still remembered when no one else did (having royal blood is the only possible explanation I can think of for that). I also had an issue with the whole changing history/time travel thing in general. I mean, if they changed history so that Lindy was never taken by the Parkers, then that means Garon never left to help her and never found O and never learned to time travel in the first place. Which means he wouldn’t have been able to go to the future and be with Lindy. Not to mention the entire present would probably be different—Maggie and her friends probably wouldn’t even exist if so much history was changed. *END SPOILER ALERT*

The one thing I liked, however, was that it was actually realistic that Maggie pretty much had no clue what to do and floundered and needed other people to help her and do most everything for her. For example, if any teenager (or any adult even) in real life were told they needed to steal something from a museum, would they be able to do it? No, of course not, so I was glad Maggie wasn’t able to either. My favorite scene was actually when she tried to break into the museum because that is exactly what I imagine would happen if someone tried to break in with a screwdriver and an internet printout on lock-picking. Same goes for Lindy and how she wasn’t sure what to do about the binding.

Oh, the other thing I liked was that it was kind of a Princess and the Pea retelling. I’d never seen that before! I say kind of though because, in the world of the book, it was Lindy and her past that the story was inspired by (it just got altered over time).

So overall, I just never felt all that invested in the characters or the story and didn’t like all the things that didn’t add up, but the writing itself wasn’t bad, so others may enjoy it more.