4.5 stars.

I’ve been wanting to read this book for a really long time. Why? It has everything I like: magic, courtly intrigues, a slow burn romance, and a fairy tale touch.

What really struck me was how this book emulates the fairy tale of Cinderella. It follows the same plot trajectory being that someone goes from a position of status and wealth to one of a lower class and then finally balance is re-established once again when she rises up to her original level of superiority. What everyone reall More...

I hereby declare that people should stop reading so many YA paranormals and begin to read YA fantasy! The genre has some really good literature that is slipping under the radar thanks to multi-million dollar deals about flowers and demi-gods. Pish!

Eilis O'Neal's The False Princess interested me from the day I first read the blurb for the book. I finally managed to get my hands on a copy, and it's lived up to my expectations. Plot, writing characterization — they were all up to the mark, and the More...

This sounds so much like the Decoy Princess by Dawn Cook. Other than being the exact same plot...

I liked this one much better than Dawn Cook's book. I didn't find myself having an extreme dislike for the main character. And I love the interactions with the main love interest. I hope to have someone make a smile burn across my face someday. :D

Nalia, princess of Thorvaldor, receives the scare of her life when she finds out she is in fact not princess Nalia, but Sinda, a girl without any royal blood whatsoever. Sixteen years ago, a prophecy about the princess was made; there was a chance that she would be murdered before her sixteenth birthday. So the king and queen switched their daughter with a regular baby and raised her as their own, only to be tossed aside after Sinda turns sixteen. A wizard removes the spell Sinda was under, maki More...

It was very, very difficult for me to rate this book. Before even opening it, my expectations were at a 3-star level. The first hundred pages or so were super enjoyable, so I started raising it to the 4 range. But after that my interest almost completely disappeared. I was debating between 2 and 3 stars, but as you can see I went with three.

Well, that was an interesting anecdote. If you can't tell, I am not exactly thrilled to be writing this review. When books don't elicit much of a response fr More...

I love fantasy. After reading so many different books about fantasy worlds and fantasy characters, I’ve been dying to get my hands on something really good. I heard about this book A LONG time ago and I’ve been waiting for it to be ready for reviewing. When I got my hands on it, I read it immediately. I was looking for something good. Eilis O’Neal delivered.

In most fantasies, a lot of the plot and story are focused on explain the world and how everything works. While this is a good idea, it’s no More...

Originally reviewed on my blog, Books from Bleh to Basically Amazing.

The False Princess by Ellis O'Neal is the story of Nalia, a 16 year old princess who finds out shortly after her birthday that she is not the princess after all. After a prophecy that stated the princess could die before her 16th birthday, the king and queen and their trusted magical advisors secretly switched the true princess with a peasant to keep her safe. Now that they have reached 16, the princess will live, and it is no More...

Well. For the most part, I enjoyed this a lot more than I'd have expected, based on its being a medievalesque fantasy, involving a rightful heir(ess), and it being crucial that said rightful heiress be the one to inherit the throne. I think part of what made me like it was that the premise was just so extreme, that I thought it would be hard to go back to the standard fantasy setting of monarchy is the only proper system of governance. Although there are numerous reviews setting out that premise More...

check out the full review here: http://best-of-ya.blogspot.com/2011/0...

Plot: This book has pretty much everything you would want to read about; romance, adventure, magic, fantasy, mystery, etc. There is a lot happening in the story-line, but it is not at all confusing and is really easy to follow along with. There were some parts that were easy to guess, but there were just as many that surprised me. I had a hard time putting this book down because of all the suspense. I needed to know what hap More...

False Princess, I’ll tumble for ya. There are WIZARDS and CONSPIRACIES, and ROYALTY, and WUV TRUE WUV. The False Princess by Eilis O’Neal is a bang-up debut novel. If you enjoyed The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale and that style of writing, friend, you’ll LOVE this book. Plot in a nutshell? So Nalia is heir to the Thorvaldian throne, princess of the kingdom, best friends with jokester Kiernan, life is good. Then she is summoned by her parents and finds out that she isn’t the real princess. Her name More...

I wasn't in love with this book. I can't put my finger on it either, which is frustrating; however, there was nothing that really jumped out at me that made me dislike it...it just never grabbed me.
That said, if you're into YA Fantasy, you liked Ella Enchanted, you'll probably like this book.

*NOTE* Upon reflection, I think the reason why I didn't like this book very much was because I didn't like the protagonist's voice. It didn't resonate with me or make me like her. That's not to say it wasn't More...

On her sixteenth birthday, Nalia learns that she is not actually a princess. She was switched at birth to protect the real princess from an assassination attempt. Even her name is different, she is actually Sinda. She is sent back to her only living relative with very little money and no skills for village life. Now that the spell making her appear to be the princess is gone, her own suppressed magic makes itself known. She must learn to handle it before it harms someone. To do that she must ret More...

Review

Prepare for some seriously gushy book love.

The False Princess is the perfect storm. It delivers magic, secret identities, hidden truths, and a bit of romance in one incredible story. I am in LOVE with this book!

The intricate story-line is perfectly laid out. It is not at all confusing, but it is most certainly compelling. Let’s just say that Eilis O’Neal is an expert at building suspense and I did not want to stop reading for even a minute. With moments that will make you cry, scream, laug More...

By Ellis O'Neal
Fantasy
Finished 4-23-13
319 pages

This book is about a sixteen year old girl named Nalia, or at least she thinks that's her real name. One day the king and queen tell her that she is really a false princess and that the other princess was hidden until she was sixteen because a prophecy foretold she would be killed before that age. The false princess, whose real name is Sinda, goes to live with her aunt, who is a dyer. But when she finds out she has magic in her blood, she becomes th More...

I liked this story.

But there were a few things that really annoyed me.

How exactly did Sinda get herself expelled from the
Palace without ever uttering a word against the injustice
of it all? Okay I get that she was in shock and everything,
but come on! Nobody can be such a push over.

And the bloody King and Queen? Seriously they practically
raised the child for 16 years and then they dump her out of
the Palace without even a hint of compassion. Sure they looked
grieved but they overstepped the mark of More...

I really enjoyed this book. The plot was something completely new; I'd never heard of anything like it. The idea of growing up as a princess, never doubting who you really were - and then to be told you are not. To have your whole identity stripped away, to have everything you've ever known torn from your grasp. What do you do? How does one start again, when everything they've ever known is gone? When they are completely alone, with no one to confide in or talk to?

The plot itself, if you haven't More...

Since It's Winter Break, I took my annual WB gander through my library to find all sorts of books to read over break. I always spend most of my time in the New Shelf of the Teen Section; it has a good number of YA books released in the past year. When I saw the title The False Princess, it intrigued me, I thought; that is new, never in my many years (7, to be exact) of reading YA books, have I been so dragged in by a title. I imediately added it to my pile. (Which would be expanded to 9 books by More...

At age 16, the princess finds out that she is not really royal, that she was a commoner baby chosen to be raised as a decoy because of a prophecy that the princess would be murdered. Her real name is Sinda Azaway. She is dumped off with a distant relative living in poverty and forgotten. The rest of the book focuses on her identity crisis, discovering new abilities, and solving the mystery of the real plot to the throne. Oh, and there's this thing going on with her childhood best friend, the son More...

Somewhere between 3 and 4 stars.

Originally reviewed at sixmixedreviews.blogspot.com

The False Princess reminded me a lot of The Bayern series by Shannon Hale (Goose Girl, Enna Burning). It also reminded me of The Peasant Queen series by Cheri Chesley. I liked both series and so it goes to follow that I liked The False Princess. Definitely a book a would recommend for the other reviewers here and probably most of our readers.

Heavy on underdog teen overcoming all the odds, light on romance. I was More...

O’Neal, E. (2011). The false princess. New York: Egmont. 323 pp. ISBN: 978-1-60684-079-5. (Hardcover); $16.99.*

Nalia wears princess clothes, eats princess food, and does princess-ly things like learning dead languages, consulting with magicians, dancing royal dances, and keeping the hoi polloi at a distance. On her 16 birthday, however, all of her princessiness comes to an end. Turns out that she is not the real princess at all. She is a fill in princess, a false princess, put in place to protec More...

Naila dibesarkan dari kecil hingga berumur enam belas tahun sebagai tuan putri Thorvaldor. Naila hanya mengenal dirinya ,keluarganya dan Kiernan,sahabatnya dari keluarga bangsawan. Ketika dia dipanggil menghadap kedua orang tuanya, sehari setelah dia berumur enam belas tahun, Naila mengetahui bahwa dirinya selama ini hanya putri pengganti dan nama aslinya a/ Sinda. Sinda diberitau alasannya, ada ramalan yang menyebutkan bahwa putri yang asli akan terbunuh sebelum usia enam belas tahun.

Jadilah si More...

3.5 stars

Nalia has lived the life of a princess for all her sixteen years - privileged and educated. And then, out of the blue, she is told that she isn't really the princess. She was raised in the palace in order to ensure the safety of the true princess, who was then ready to take the throne. Suddenly, thrust out into the real world, the-girl-who-was-Nalia (now Sinda), has so much to learn, not just practical life skills but a knowledge of the magic that appeared inaccessible. Soon, she is on More...

Spoiler alert. I’m… I’m totally going to ruin the plot here, for you.

First off, you need to ignore the cover, where it looks like our False Princess has a little bit of giraffe in her genes. Good lord. Was she tortured as a child? Is this a birth defect of some kind? I know they had to get her head out of the way so the title could fit nicely, but couldn’t the publishers think of a better design?

Okay. That’s my complaint. Now the story.

Princess Nalia is summoned on her 16th birthday to meet wit More...

I loved this book! I thought it was interesting to see the flip side of the rise to fame story. She is a princess and then when she turned 16 she learns that she actually isn't the princess, just one that took her place in case someone decided to kill the princess before her 16th birthday. Devestated to find out that she is not who she thought she was her whole life, she is sent out to the streets to make her own life. But what life skills does a princess have really? She struggles until she dis More...

The best way to describe this novel is as a “backward fairy tale.” Princess Nalia has it all. She will one day be Queen of Thorvaldor. She has a cute male “friend” who is obviously in love with her. She is intelligent, has had the best education there is to offer, and has the world at her fingertips. Everything falls apart, however, when she is told by the King and Queen that she really isn’t the princess at all. Instead she is a fake, a spelled commoner who was switched with the real princess a More...

Okay, here's the deal: Sinda has been a princess her entire life. She's kind of clumsy, not too graceful, but she's sweet and kind and stubborn, all good qualities for someone who will rule. That is, until her parents let her know that they're not her parents and she's just been a stand-in for the REAL princess, who's arriving in a few days. So, with almost no money and stripped of her title, she is sent to live with her aunt and in a tumble of crazy things, sent on a magical quest to find out a More...

A promessa do livro me deixou intrigada desde o começo… amo livros com uma boa intriga, com aventura e magia… e também amo quando eles acontecem em reinos distantes… com nobres, cavaleiros, principes, princesas, rainhas e reis…
The False Princess tem um ritmo ótimo… eu sei que eu quase sempre falo isso nas minhas resenhas… mais é sempre a verdade: eu comecei o livro e não consegui mais parar…
Sinda é uma personagem principal incrível que está passando por uma master crise de identidade… e ninguém More...

The False Princess is very sweet. Very cute. I probably would have enjoyed it with no reservations, say, five years ago. Unfortunately, I think I might just be too washed up and cynical.

No, seriously, it's good fun. The main characters are likeable, the romance is adorable, the plot is decent. There are definitely people I would recommend this book for.

The main character, Sinda, starts off as a shy and awkward princess who finds out she's really a commoner who was switched at birth with the re More...

So, I have to admit, when I finished the last page of this book, I sighed. OUT LOUD! It was that perfect of an ending.

I loved this book all the way from the beginning. It was such an interesting storyline and had so many interesting features. I was enthralled through the whole thing.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure how I was going to like this one. I actually put off reading it for quiet a while. I’ve had a hard time with books not set in modern times lately and I also didn’t really want to read a pr More...