Flames, trolls, dragons, evil puppies, wizards, marriage, magical slippers, and I’m just getting started… The rushed world building is detrimental to the rest of the book it amplified the other flaws in Spelled, such as Dorthea’s tendency to get on my nerves with her whining. The plot takes so many turns that I was lost within the first fifty pages. This sentence will make you nostalgic for your childhood: “It’s like that bedtime story ‘If You Give A Princess Some Tea, She’ll Ask For A Cookie to Go With It’.” By the time I read all her fairy tale survival rules and references to Emerald’s bestselling novels, I had thoroughly creeped my roommate out with my incessant cackling. Take, for instance, my favorite sentence of the book: “The first few bars from Wrong Direction’s hit song, “My Spell’s What Makes You Beautiful,” came on from somewhere close by.” I had the privilege of spending three hundred fifty-two pages with Dorthea’s snarky sense of humor. My favorite part of Spelled? The puns on fantasy and real life. It’s up to Dorthea and her “pixed off” prince to get her parents back from the mysterious “Kansas” and find the mysterious Wizard of Oz to undo the curse of “unhappily ever after.” But Dorthea’s not one for siting around and waiting for her fairy godmother she wishes on a cursed star instead, which totally backfires. In fact, Dorthea would rather give up being the crown princess of Emerald and the accompanying perks ― the Glenda Original ball gowns and the Hans Christian Louboutin heels ― than marry that imbecile. For one, she’s “completely princed out” and forced to marry the brooding prince Kato.

Our main character, Dorthea, is at the center of such chaos. The plot of Spelled can be described in the following five words, a fairy tale gone wrong.

I found such a “clean” novel a week ago when I read Spelled Betsy Schow’s book is the epitome of a clean read, the epitome of the funny, adorable, and age-appropriate novel. (Tbh I’m still looking for books without intense kissing scenes…) Unfortunately, other than Ally Carter and Jenny B. My biggest struggle in middle school was finding “clean” YA novels, those rare books without any swear words, intense make-out scenes, or deep existential questions.

Betsy schow books in order