Just Ella
Fantasy
By: Margaret Peterson Haddix
Reviewed by Tetiana S.
Rated 5 out of 5 stars.
Every girls dream back then, was to marry the handsome prince and live happily ever after. Unsuspected, simple, Ella is chosen to be the new princess. She can finally leave her cruel step-mother and step-sisters and marry the dashing prince. She goes and lives in the castle and learns about how to be the princess since she wasn’t brought up properly she needs lots of training. She gets a young tutor who is a replacement and they talk more often then they study. Ella sees this man more exciting than the prince. With his big dreams that he always talks about which would most likely never come true since he’s just a little older than her, but Ella likes the way he looks at life. On the bright side not at all the horrible things that are happening to him.
Once a week she gets to see her fiancé. At first everything is great and wonderful. The prince is handsome she’s nervous and shy. As time goes on, Ella discovers that the price is really boring. He talks about nothing except hunting games and how much fowl he shot. Sometimes they just sit there for at least ten minutes of silence and its really awkward for Ella. Finally she tells him that she wants to break the engagement. At first he doesn’t do anything but then he flies into a rage. His advisors tell him to send her to the dungeon. That’s what he does, because he doesn’t know how to do anything on his own. He has advisors tell him what to do and he does it. He doesn’t have a brain of his own on which to rely. The engagement can not be broken by anyone except for the prince. If someone else was to break it, it would make the whole royal family be looked at in a bad light. She is put into the dungeon until the wedding day. If she marries the prince, she will live a dull boring life in a castle surrounded by guards. So Ella comes up with the great idea to dig herself out of her dungeon. She starts, but can she finish before the wedding six days away?
Just Ella is a great book. It is exciting and keeps you interested in what happens not at just the beginning but all the way to the end. It’s doesn’t look very long, and it isn’t, but it has a lot of detail in it. You really get to learn about the characters and they seems so real that you can almost put yourself in their shoes and live in a totally different world.
