A Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn

Princess Talia of Euphrasia was given many fairy gifts at birth including beauty, intelligence, and charm, but she was also given a curse. Before her sixteenth birthday she would prick herself on a spindle and fall asleep until her true love kissed her. Naturally her parents don’t want this to happen to their precious daughter and they annihilate all spindles from their tiny country. Alas though, regardless of their precautions Talia still manages to find a spindle on the eve of her sixteenth birthday and falls into a deep sleep.

Three hundred years later, Jack and his friend Travis are on a month long summer tour of Europe and are honestly sick and tired of visiting museum after museum. One morning they get up with the intention of finding a beach, but end up finding Euphrasia, frozen in time. While exploring Jack stumbles upon Talia, beautiful as ever and he can’t help but kiss her. And that’s the mistake he made.

Talia wakes up, as does the kingdom, believing that Jack is her true love, after all he did wake her, and having a hard time coming to terms that three hundred years have passed. Nonetheless she is eager to start her new life with Jack, even though he has no interest in marrying her, as he is still only seventeen. Wanting to explore the world Talia sneaks off with Jack and they return to Jack’s home in Miami, where Talia learns what it is like to be a “normal” teenager in the 21^st century!

This book is too cute! While it is very fluffy, the story is heartwarming and fun, which makes the story very likeable. I loved how Alex Flinn took a normal fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty, and transformed it into a modern day love story.

At the beginning the characters were quite underdeveloped and just seemed to be there with no personality and lacking direction. As the story progressed though they became much more real and the story became so much better. Jack had to deal with a lot especially his parents not believing and accepting him. They pushed him to do things just to pad his college application even though he hated doing them and nothing he wanted was good enough for his parents. This is definitely an issue that real teens face and I commend Alex Flinn for working that issue, and how sometimes teens misinterpret it, because it really shows that you really can do what you want to do. In Talia’s case she was very whiny at the beginning, but as she got to know Jack more she became more of a real character and much more appealing to the audience.

Overall this book is a light read that would satisfy a craving for a good fairy tale and of course a little romance. It was fun to see the author connect two different time periods and join two very different families together.