THE PRINCESS PLOT
by Kirsten Boie and translated by David Henry Wilson
Boie shows why she’s such a popular novelist in Germany, with a tale so engaging that readers will shrug off the contrivances she needs to bring it all off. Impelled by the dazzling promises of supposed talent scouts, mousy 14-year-old Jenna slips away from her severely overprotective mother to try out for a role in a nonexistent movie. Only gradually does she come to realize that she’s been kidnapped to be a double for the runaway princess of the small northern country of Scandia—an outwardly peaceful land troubled by increasing civil violence. Despite her profound naïveté and a nature so timorous that she bursts into tears at the drop of a hat, Jenna will put readers firmly on her side as she escapes her captors, meets the real fugitive princess, helps to scotch the plans of the local warmongers—and discovers some astounding facts about her own hidden background. Reminiscent of Philip Pullman’s Tin Princess (1994) in setting, and also in being clever, quick-paced and well stocked with Royals, Boie’s U.S. debut carries a full load of reader appeal. (Fiction. 10-13)