The Princess Diaries, written by Meg Cabot, are a series of books and films about a teenage girl called Mia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldi. Mia is the main character of this story. The Princess Diaries describe the problems and difficulties that Mia has at this stage of her life. But on top of all this, Mia’s father was brought up in the royal Genovian family and this has affected Mia in many ways because she must change many things, including her attitude, in order to become part of the royal Genovian family.

       In the first few books Mia was panicking when her grandmother Queen Clarisse tells her that Mia was the new heir to the thrown in Genovia. Mia reacts in shock and tells her grandmother to shut up and explains how she was never meant to be a princess. Mia stormed out of her grandmother’s fancy house in outrage. Mia is struggling to be the princess of Genovia but becomes more used to royalty.

      Mia’s best friend Lilly Moscovitz is very clever but can be very critical. Lilly is still in shock that Mia is involved with the royal Genovian family. Therefore she invented short nicknames for Mia, either POG (princess of Genovia) or PIT (princess in training). Mia is usually offended by these nicknames but decides not to ask Lilly to stop. Lilly has a TV show called Lilly Tells It Like This, which discusses political and social events in the world.

     Michael Moscovitz is Mia’s extremely smart and handsome boyfriend. Despite staying up writing songs or on his computer the whole day, Mia says that she loves the odour of his neck. He cares for Mia even though he gets frustrated with her behavior sometimes. He loves Mia exactly the way she is, and would love to marry her. Mia thinks that Michael is too good for her and whenever something goes wrong in their relationship she thinks that he will break up with her.    

     Clarisse Marie Renaldi has a lot in common with Mia, besides the fact that Clarisse is Mia’s gramdmother. There are times where Clarisse does comfort Mia and does give her advice, especially when it comes to love and boyfriends. Even though Clarisse acts as though she hates everything about her granddaughter, sometimes Clarisse shows how much she really cares.

     Mia has many problems with her love life although she has a handsome boyfriend called Michael Moscovitz. Michael and Mia are in a promising relationship with each other and they would never want to separate no matter what.  But sadly this all has to change when Michael has to move to Japan where they had offered him a two-year contract working on a robotic arm for the future which could make him a millionaire and would change Mia and Michael’s life around.

    This is an amazing opportunity for Michael. Mia is very happy for him but she is not very happy herself. She is devastated at the fact that she has to be two years without her one true love.

        I admired the style that the book was written in because it was very clear; different things happened in different stages of time. I love books with characters that have different problems to do with boys. I think personally that I relate to the characters because I always picture the characters in the book as my friends.

      Meg Cabot is a fantastic author and she knows how and why these characters and their situations will thrill people. She has really inspired me to write stories and hopefully stories like hers.  Other novels written by Meg Cabot are; Grave Doubts, Mean Spirits, Runaway and Insatiable.

     I would definitely recommend The Princess Diaries After Eight for ten-to-fifteen-year-olds but for the rest of the collection of The Princess Diaries collection I would recommend it for seven- year- olds and above.