Rosie's Reviews

A Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn

This is the story of Sleeping Beauty, but with a modern twist. In this book, the princess, Talia, is cursed and pricks her finger on a spindle. Almost 300 years later, a 17-year-old boy named Jack stumbles upon her kingdom, Euphrasia, after it had been hidden from the rest of the world by a dense forest of thorny plants. He finds the princess and kisses her, and she wakes up. However, no one thinks that Jack is really her ‘true love,’ the only one capable of breaking the curse. Since Talia’s family is mad at her, she runs away to Florida with Jack, causing an uproar at home. While Talia is with Jack, she learns about the modern world while secretly trying to make Jack love her. Not satisfied, Malvolia, the faerie that cursed Talia takes her back to her cottage in Euphrasia. She originally plans to kill Talia, but then she decides not to and instead chooses to have Talia prick her finger on another spindle, only to be woken up if she is kissed by her true love. Jack and his father hurry to Euphrasia to save Talia, and Jack finds the hill with Malvolia’s cottage on top. However, he must pass some tests to get to the top, and another test inside the cabin. He kisses Talia and she wakes up. They go back to her father’s castle, where Jack’s father has been talking with the king, and find out that Jack’s father and Talia’s father have decided to turn Euphrasia into a tourist attraction in order to exist in the modern world.

I thought this book was pretty good. It was a little cliched and I generally don’t like books that mimic fairy tales in this manner, but it wasn’t actually that bad. The plot didn’t really go anywhere and there weren’t really any really cool twists in the story. It was a good story, but it was also kind of lame. The characters in this book are OK, but not really awesome. Jack is kind of rude a lot of the time, and Talia is rather bratty. They get over it eventually, but it is present throughout most of the book. On the Teen Reading Scale, I would give this book a score of ‘cool.’ I probably would not recommend it to other people to read, because it’s not really worth it and there are a lot of other books out there that are a lot better.