Customer Reviews

A Kiss in Time

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Alex Flinn has really hit her stride with fairy tale retellings! I loved Beastly and I love A Kiss in Time! This sleeping beauty is an amazing character, who goes believable from spoiled brat to true heroine as she wakes up in the 21st Century and copies with everything from air travel to Jello shots in a matter of weeks. What I like best is that this one features a really great love story, where the love is not about a magical kiss but a true friendship. Like Beastly, this one features a really cool witch who has real depth and lots of tricks up her sleeve.

Talia is a spoiled princess who has seriously overslept...oh, by about 316 years.

Jack is a jeans and t-shirt guy from Miami who just wants a break from another lame European museum tour.

When Jack kisses Talia in this re-telling of Sleeping Beauty what readers get is a series of hilarious situations coupled with a sweet, it-can't-possibly-work romance.

This is my favorite book by Alex Flinn and I hope she's hard at work on her next 21st century fairy tale!
--Reviewed by Michelle Delisle

Like Flinn's other young adult novel I read (Beastly) this is a fairy tale re-done and modernized. In this case its 'Sleeping Beauty' and I definitely feel less of a Disney vibe from this (for some reason Beastly put me in mind of the Disney Beauty and the Beast, not the fairy tale itself). I do admit however that Sleeping Beauty was never a popular fairy tale for me growing up--it didn't seem like the Princess did anything at all, but she got herself a Prince. It seemed terribly unfair to me.

The book itself is broken up into 3 Parts--Part 1: Talia (before the curse), Part 2: Jack (before he broke the curse) and then Part 3 Talia and Jack (after the curse is broken), with Part 1 and 2 being told in first person from Talia or Jack's POV and the third part alternating back and forth between them.

At first Talia annoyed me--she really did seem like the obnoxious brat her companion, Lady Brooke, accused her of being. For instance for her 16th birthday she wanted the PERFECT gown to celebrate so her father orders in 25 different dressmakers to create 20 different dresses all in her particular size. She is very rude to most of them out loud and even worse mentally. I was kind of happy when she got cut down to size by the witch Malvoila.

Then I met Jack and any annoyances I had towards Talia went out the window. Jack is every worse teenage stereotype all rolled up into one (for much of the book at least). He's in Europe, on a vacation across the continent and all he does is complain about how its not all topless beaches and sleazy euro-trash celebrities in cafes. He's visiting all sorts of museums and while he's sort of interested, he's too busy trying to get to the topless beaches to really care.

The two of them together is humorous--its kind of a test of wills to see who can outdo the other in sheer brattiness. Talia at least has a decent reason--she's a Princess after all and let's face it traditionally raised royal children in fairy tales are not sweet, generous and used to trials. Jack seems to mostly want to embrace his inner angst muffin status and be left alone to sulk about his misfortunes and ruined summer.

In the end I wasn't as interested in this book as I was in Beastly and its style (I really did like the chat room sessions for all of the unfortunate transformed kids), plus with both leads vying to annoy me the most I didn't want them together. The world would implode came to mind a few times.

I'm usually on guard when I read a synopsis about a bratty princess on an adventure. So I had prepared myself to deal with an idiot princess getting in the way, eating things she wasn't suppose to, wandering away and getting kidnapped ect. ect. ect.

But I was very pleasantly surprised to find the princess Talia to be very smart and adaptive.

The story is mostly about finding yourself and your dreams. There is no dragon slaying. No big adventure throughout the country side.

The story is told from both the perspective of Jack, the 'prince' who woke Talia. And Talia, the sleeping beauty princess. I loved this because you could see what they were both thinking about the same situation, which I always tend to wonder while reading.

Even the "Villain" has a story, a reason to do what she does, which I love. Having the villain be so personable and interesting is something Flinn does very well. (Especially in Beastly.)

I would recommend this to anyone that wants to read fluffy, cute romance with a bit of a twist to it.

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 findng 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 just 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 imagining 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 21st century.

This book is too cute! While it is very fluffy, the story is heartwarming and cute, 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 really lacked direction. As the story progressed though they became much more real and the story became so much better. Jack had to deal a lot with his parents not believing and accepting him. They pushed him to do things just to put on his college application even though he hated 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 yu really can do what yu 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 appeasable 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 to very different families together.

Jack and his friends are on a tour of Europe when they wonder off from their tour. They stumble on a village frozen in time. When he finds a beautiful girl (Talia) who is sleeping he is compelled to kiss her, breaking a curse that awakens her from a 300 year nap. The story follows Jack and Talia as they make their way back to the United States and Talia adapts to life in the modern world. Will it be the perfect love story or will the evil witch who cursed Talia win in the end?

Finn has adapted a classic fairy tale and added a twist of having to adapt to a new time period. The characters are well done and fun to watch. Talia is a typical spoiled princess at first but soon changes as she must rely on Jack to help her make her way in her new world. Jack has his own problems too, parents who expect him to do as told, and not choose a career that he desires. In the background is the wicked witch who placed the curse on Talia and is determined to recapture her.

The plot is predictable and at times funny, especially as Talia tries to adapt to the new technology she finds in Jack's world. I did find it an easy read, but saw the ending coming half way through the book. I enjoyed the novel, it is a light and fun book if you enjoy revisiting the fairy tales from your past with an updated twist.

Spindles are an illegal device not to be had. At least, not in Euphrasia. Euphrasia is a small country near Belgium, and its princess, Talia, has been put under a spell. A spell that says she will prick her finger on a spindle before her sixteenth birthday, and she will die. The good fairies tried to change the spell, so now the entire kingdom will fall asleep upon Talia's spindle-pricking. Until a prince, Talia's true love, comes to the castle and kisses her awake. Talia's parents have done all they can to secure that Talia would not prick her finger on a spindle, but when the evil witch's curse comes to pass anyway, the entire kingdom passes into a deep sleep, a hedge grows around their small country, and the rest of the world forgets there ever was a Euphrasia...

Until the day when Jack, an attention-starved high-schooler from Miami, Florida, happens upon the hedge of briars during his boring and uneventful trip to Europe. When he enters the castle and finds Talia, he feels the unexplainable urge to kiss her - not to mention he suddenly knows her name. When he does kiss her, she wakes in his arms and he is forced to help her - and save his own hide from her angry father, the King-No-More of Euphrasia. But with Talia convinced he is her true love, he won't be getting rid of her very easily. At least it'll make his parents mad...
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My thoughts -

I devoured this book easily. It wasn't that the writing was easy to read (however, that is also true), but more so that the story flowed so well I couldn't put it down. There was no break in the character development or story-line. I was entranced in the fairytale of Sleeping Beauty as though I hadn't heard it a hundred and one times before.

I was absolutely surprised at how much I liked this book. Jack and Talia are both memorable characters; the events of the story are well-placed; it is very original for being yet another retelling of a fairytale. I was amazed at how much I enjoyed the present tense, first person standpoint, which normally really bothers me. But not this time. This time I was thoroughly engrossed and loved feeling as though I was there. And on top of that, this book is funny. And I mean FUN. NY! Laugh out loud, giggly, hilarious, whatever you want to call it. It pretty much made me laugh all the time. (Especially Talia's reaction to telephones and TV's...and Jack's reaction to the clothes she gives him from her time-period. They were both so confused!)

Alex Flinn does a great job at comparing and contrasting the culture Talia comes from and the culture that she has now been thrust into. The innocence of the 16, 17, and 18oo's is greatly played upon. Talia is disgusted by all the almost-all-the-way naked women at the beach, and is shocked by the half-naked women around town (compared to floor length dresses and covered bosoms...yah, they were practically naked). She hates how the young girls are flaunting themselves in Jack's presence; how Jack's friends treat each other and themselves (which is terrible); how Jack feels like he can't talk to his parents or sister. (What a culture we live in, to not know how to use the power of speech! Talia's point on this is quite driving and really struck me as serious and realistic.)

There was only one (literally, only one) drawback in this story for me. The love story. I know, I know. Sucks, doesn't it?

Well, the love story was good. It was sweet and innocent.......but a bit choppy. It wasn't until I was half of the way finished when I realized this. Nothing much, except the first kiss at the beginning and Talia being beautiful, happened that would make the characters love each other. (And that's not even very convincing, sorry!) No deciding factors, no developing thoughts about it. Just, half-way through: "I think I'm falling for him." and "I think I'm falling for her." Jack's attempts to save Talia from her curse (read it to know what I mean!) were great but still...there was something missing. And their moment of discovering that they truly love each other had no spark, no firecrackers. It was just... "Yay, they love each other." Not: "Oh my GOSH they are so in love and are so passionate about each other!!!" Which kind of disappointed me, since I know Alex Flinn has that capacity. She did it masterfully in Beastly. I just wish there had been more of that in A Kiss in Time.

My favorite character -

Jack. He was great and real. Easy to get along with, but kind of a push over. Passionate about things, but afraid to tell his parents what he wants to do with his life. Blind to his faults, but when they are presented to him, he wants to change... These are all things that make a character real and human and just plain awesome.

My favorite aspect of the story -

Tali'a's innocence. Now, she may know that she's drop-dead-gorgeous, but she knows this in a...young kind of way. The way her "newness" affects the story and Jack's life and makes him a better person is just phenomenal. I loved that and applauded her when the story was over.

One word I would use to sum up this book (and final thoughts) -

Cute. So, so cute. Everything about it was cute, even the romance. I think the lack of "passion" in the romance was what made it "cute". I will most definitely be reading this book again, and hopefully soon. I am officially a huge Alex Flinn fan and recommend this book to ages 15/16 and up.


For the parents - Teenage boys will be teenage boys... About 10-15 short references throughout the book to hot girls, their sizes, and what they're wearing. But the biggest thing is the party: drinking and girls. A bunch of underage high schoolers get together to drink and make out (and possibly more, though it wasn't even referenced to). Talia is taken unawares when this guy from Jack's school gives her too much to drink and he tries to take her clothes off once he gets her further away from the party. It's a very quick scene (with minimal description - nothing much happens 'cause the dude doesn't get very far before Talia lashes out), during which Talia realizes her folly, Jack realizes his stupidity in bringing her as a way to get back at his ex, and both learn a huge lesson in maturity.

It's no secret that Ms Flinn is re-telling sleeping beauty. Her story is so much more though, not the least of which is a social study of today's society. She cleverly writes and engages readers of all ages. For avid and mature readers this is a fast read but packed with thought provoking scenarios. Though the plot is impossible, Flinn makes it seem plausable. For careful readers (young teens) there is a party scene with drinking involved, but I felt it was well written with accurate natrual consequences.

Every once in a while it's undeniably refreshing to read a story full of charm and whimsy, one that sweeps us off our feet in a torrent of sweet simplicity and brings a giddy smile to our faces as though our very own prince charming has just stepped from the pages and pledged his undying love. Reality is eclipsed by fantasy, whisking us away to a world where fairy tales are not merely stories passed from generation to generation for entertainment, but instead are tangible truths, weaving their spell through real life and bringing with them a joyful effervescence that speaks to the child in us who loves to believe in magic. Humor abounds, new and old worlds collide, and a heartwarming destiny is fulfilled as we walk alongside Jack and Talia, laughing at their antics and reveling in their merriment.

Talia is positively adorable, approaching her new environment with a playful curiosity, questioning the smallest of details and viewing the world with an innocence and purity that forces us to take a step back and appreciate our own surroundings so we may share in some of pleasure of her experience. Though she is severely lacking in modesty, Talia is not the least bit vain, her beauty instead a mere statement of fact. She does not lord her station over Jack, nor force those she meets to gratefully condescend to her magnificence as one might expect a medieval princess to do; instead her royal visage is rapidly discarded as she gleefully appreciates each and every moment with the boy who broke her curse and his family. She is utterly genuine despite being a chronological implausibility, and it's nearly impossible not to be affected by the incandescence she effortlessly radiates page to page.

Perhaps most entertaining is watching as two people previously unhappy, though somewhat unaware as to the extent of their misery, with the direction of their lives find themselves traveling a new path together, one paved with the wishes and dreams they fear to admit to themselves or others as they walk side by side with the person who has the potential to bring them immeasurable happiness. Both Jack and Talia have hidden their innermost desires, trapped by the expectations of those around them and burdened with the pressures of fulfilling their commitments and obligations to their family, only discovering the strength of their own passion for something different through a relationship with one another. Each is granted the ability to see their life through the unbiased and naive eyes of the other, thereby halting their willingness to succumb to what's been outlined for them, and allowing them both to find the voice that's been suppressed formerly by a sense of duty.

A Kiss in Time pulls us into a fantastical story characterized by joy and fancifulness, one that doesn't take itself too seriously, finding amusement in the unbelievable and levity in the usually dramatic teenage true love scenario. It's one that is content and successful in it's relative superficiality, keeping us thoroughly entertained without leaving us with any lingering questions or haunting memories. Pick this one up if you want to breath a sigh of contentment upon reading the conclusion, completely satisfied by an endearing tale of discovering one's place in life, in love, and in happily ever after.

Rating: 4/5

A retelling of the Sleeping Beauty tale set in modern times, this story alternates narration between the princess Talia, who has slept through the last 300 years, and the definitely-not-a-prince Jack, who had the misfortune of waking up her and her entire kingdom. Will Jack and Talia fall in love? Can Talia and her kingdom adapt to living in the 21st century? To complicate matters further, neither characters' parents are too keen on the situation and the witch that created the curse isn't satisfied with it's outcome.

Both characters start out as aimless and bratty teenagers but grow through the story by seeing themselves and their actions through each others' eyes. Despite their bratty starts, both characters are likable and have distinct voices (a feat not all authors attempting dual-narration successfully accomplish). I laughed out loud a number of times (the scene at the modeling agency was great!) and enjoyed this Flinn offering even more than her previous fairy tale retelling, Beastly. Definitely recommended.