For this novel, Robin Palmer chose The Frog Prince as her fairy tale inspiration, and I found that really interesting all on its own. That’s not a story, like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, that a lot of people take on to modernize. Some people might not even notice the similarities at first glance, and that makes it feel like its own story, really working in the book’s favor.

What also works in the book’s favor is the alternating points of view in the novel. The chapter’s go back and forth from Dylan’s perspective to Josh’s, and that’s definitely a good thing. It makes it much easier to understand the transition these two characters make to friendship, although it does happen incredibly fast (the entire book takes place over one month), which seems a little unlikely since Dylan is such a spoiled brat when the book begins. In fact, I should probably warn you now, you will probably have very little sympathy for Dylan for a bug chunk of the beginning of the book. Surprisingly, this works though, because you don‘t have to be rooting for Dylan, but for Josh to make his movie.

One of the things I really loved about this book was all of the film references. Josh drops them in to casual conversation whenever he can, whether the people around him get them or not. It isn’t completely necessary that, as a reader, you understand them either. When it comes to Josh’s parts of the book, you have complete access to why he mentions the movies he does, and when it comes to Dylan’s parts of the book, it is easy to see why she doesn’t catch the references. Still, it’s nice to have these bits and pieces of information sprinkled throughout the novel to learn from. Of course, it probably helps that the writer spent a lot of her time working in Hollywood before she became a young adult novelist, so she had a wealth of knowledge to draw from.

A lot of the plot points are predictable. If you’ve seen a teen movie, you’ll know what to expect. That being said, the typical boy-meets-girl fairy tale ending is not exactly what you get at the close of the book. This is a light read that you will fully enjoy once you are able to get passed all of Dylan’s flaws, just like Josh.