Wisdom's Kiss

Wisdom's Kiss by Catherine Gilbert Murdock 

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin 

Publication Date: September 13, 2011
Hardcover: 304 pages
Price: $16.99
Series: Companion to Princess Ben
On the library stacks: YA Fiction 

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I should say up front that I loved the Dairy Queen series and I have not read Princess Ben. However, the author makes it clear that this is a stand-alone book, even though Ben is in this book as the grandmother of Wisdom.

This book is told in a unique format. It includes 8 different points-of-view including diary entries, encyclopedia entries, letters, and a play. It's quite a task to keep up with them all, but I had more trouble with the different places for some reason than the characters. The short entries keep the book moving along at a steady pace, but I think it may have halted real character development too.

Princess Wisdom (Dizzy) longs for adventure outside of her kingdom. When the Duke of a faraway land proposes, she accepts. Fortitude (Trudy) is an orphan girl who lives within a day's journey to the Duke's home. When Dizzy's entourage stops at Trudy's inn, Trudy is asked to be a lady-in-waiting since everyone else in Dizzy's party is sick after eating bad oysters. Trudy is excited to travel once she realizes that her childhood love, Tips, is in town and they can reunite after six years apart.

The only character that I really liked in this story is Trudy. She's plucky and courageous, but has real feelings and emotions. Everyone else is pretty one-sided and I'm still kind of mad that things didn't turn out differently for Trudy. At the end, the author talks about the process of writing this book. While it does sound like she had fun, I'm not sure that all the pieces fit together cohesively enough for the target audience. For me, this is a fairy tale that falls flat. 

Source: e-copy provided by netGalley and Houghton Mifflin for review purposes.