(REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS) Sinda Azaway's life sucks ever since she was banished from not only the palace, but her title as princess. It turns out that she is not even the real princess at all. She and everyone else in the kingdom were decieved by magic. When the real princess, Nalia, was just a baby, an Oracle predicted that the princess may die before her sixteenth birthday, so the real princess was hidden away, and Sinda replaced her. A spell was cast to put a little bit of Nalia's soul into Sinda and to preform a spell that would trick everyone to believe she was the princess. Sinda leaves, and Nalia returns. Only, that's not the real Nalia either. That's another stand-in princess. The real real princess is hidden poor in some farmland in the homeland of one of the king's most trusted magical advisers. Only, she's not trusting at all. She derived this whole plot sixteen years ago that she would switch the baby being hidden away in a convent with her own daughter so that her family may rule, just as they did many years ago before when there was conflict and conspiracy between a queen and her twin brother.
Sinda stays with her aunt for a while, who kind of hates her. And she does a lot of interesting stuff in the town. The town life is pretty cool. Unfortunately after reading on, I realized that that part of the story (about 1/4th of it) had little to do with the plot. The only relevant material was her catching feelings for her friend back home and at the end of her stay, discovering she has magic. So she journeys back to her homeland to try to get into the wizard's college. They won't take her because she's too poor now. Luckily, a cooky old witch takes her on as an apprentice and lets her live in her house so long as she works for her.
As soon as Sinda learns that the girl at the palace is not the real princess, she decides it's her life's duty to kick her off the thrown and replace her with the real princess. Why? I don't know. Because she's not the rightful princess by blood. Fortunately in the end it all works out because the real princess lived a hard poor life and has empathy to help the peasants once she's queen. And now Sinda gets to be the queen's magical advisor and to marry her golden-retriever-like childhood friend. There was only one small price of the second stand-in princess dying. Oh well, Sinda is happy and feels good knowing she saved the kingdom...from having a princess that's not of royal bloodline.
The adventures between Sinda and her crush Kiernan are fun. The world they live in is exciting and makes you feel like you're in some video game world. It's cool she has magical powers. I got sucked into the conspiracy. Then I got disappointed with their conspiracy. I was all-in the story when they were trying to put together clues, but once they discovered the true princess was hidden somewhere, I was like come on. Who cares if a fake princess is on the thrown. The fake princess is so nice. Besides, the real princess has absolutely no royal training and barely any education at all. The book was uncomfortably political, like, yes let's have this pretty rich girl from the convent die so that the poor girl can be queen and help everyone! As if they wouldn't have been able to advise the second princess to help people, or that she didn't have a heart. I think there was a lot of explaining that needed to be done. The stakes were not high enough. There should have been something really, really bad that would have happened if the fake princess got crowned queen. Then that would have justified them risking their lives to put someone of royal blood back on the thrown.
Ever since Sinda learned she was not the princess she was shocked at being displaced. Then, after talking to the second false princess, Sinda learned she felt shocked at being displaced as well. Then Sinda went on a journey to displace the real princess and that would have displaced the second one again (if she had not died). Sinda is crazy, doesn't think things through, and has anger issues. The third princess also has anger issues.
The second princess, Orianne, was well fit to become queen. Dignified, graceful, and kind. Nothing about the conspiracy justified them letting Orianne die.
The inner dialogue was sometimes very drawn out and repetitive.
Overall, exciting story and fascinating world. A promising story but should have been worked on more to make the stakes of switching the princesses higher. There should have been some horrible consequence if they let the magical adviser's daughter become queen.