Prince August of Charmant has simple aspirations for life. He doesn’t want to gain land or fight dragons like legendary kings because he knows wanting more leads to greedy rulers. He wants to help his kingdom and solve their problems. 

He is less enthusiastic about his lonely father’s insistence that he get marry. August liked the idea of it but after losing his mother and seeing his father’s deep pain that still persists, he has avoided thoughts of love and the loss it can bring. 

Especially as the one girl he wants, his childhood friend from Fresne, Ella, stopped writing him long ago.

In the present day, Fresne has a problem. Townspeople are mysteriously losing their memories. August and his friend, Martin, have made it their duty to look into cases of tax fraud and magical happenings and though August is scared of facing his mother’s resting place and he also has hope. Hope that maybe he can save Fresne and talk to Ella.

Once again, Miller shows how well she knows these characters, taking what we know from the movie and deepening it in a realistic way that feels natural. It’s Cinderella all over again but the Prince’s story. 

Though it’s easy since we don’t get much of the Prince’s personality in the original movie or even a name. Miller writes August as a kindred soul to Ella. He is hopeful and an idealist (who Martin provides a gloomy, realistic foil). Someone who is nice which he knows other people view as a synonym to naive and gullible. He doesn’t take offense but chooses to show that he can be kind and capable, they’re not exclusive traits. 

You can see how Miller does her work in deepening the original story while incoporating bits of the Cinderella sequels like Anastasia being the kinder one who happens to fall for a baker, and August having a funnier, goofy side as seen in the threequel plus a few other things. Also I love how the chapter titles incoporate songs from the Disney Cinderella, the Brandy/Whitney Houston Cinderella, and Into the Woods.

Now our other character is much like the prince as Ella chooses kindness every day. I’ll admit Cinderella was not my favorite when I was little and her passivity was boring to me. But now as an adult and several illuminating articles about abusive households, I can appreciate her more. She doesn’t overtly fight back but she is strong in her values. She treats her stepfamily the way she knows as her father would have wanted. She tries to see them in the best light especially her stepsisters as she understands Lady Tremine has a different sort of abusive venom towards them. 

But there is also a bit of an abused mindset that she believes if she tries hard enough, they will treat her better.  

Throughout it all, she doesn’t wish to be pitied or be rescued but August because staying is also her choice which August does respect even though he tells her that Lady Tremine’s view of her is wrong, that she is belittled because the Tremines need her more than vice versa, and that he is there to listen and to help when she wants him. 

Miller handles all of this delicately, giving both of them agency while deepening their connection after years of not speaking. Communication is another big theme of the novel, fear of saying what they want, fear of facing loss, etc.

This may be the most romantic book of the Disney Prince series so far, and the most thoughtful befitting the more romantic and introspective characters. Love is immensely powerful, it can bring the highest highs and lowest lows.

Loss is equally powerful and August asks which is more painful-to remember being so irrevocably tied to another person to never see them again or to lose the memory of that loss, lose the memory of the person itself. It’s a different sort of loss that cuts just as deep.

I really enjoy how Miller shows a different side to the Prince Charming archtypes in this series and this is no exception as she spotlights August as a bright young man with investigative skills and desire to help his community with gaining some emotional maturity on the way.

Most of all I enjoyed what it she said about love. Falling in love with someone at first glance can be magical. So is reconnecting with one over the years, finding the core of you stays the same but also fits in the changed parts. The trick is to love the person in all their changes throughout the years and continue loving them. It reminds me of my grandparents’ 64 year marriage honestly.

“They fit-and even though they had grown up and grown apart and become their own people, they were still the kind of person the other appreciated and needed. Ella wasn’t the same girl from his childhood, and he was glad. She was who she needed to be.

And he loved her, each and every her that she would ever be.”

5 glass slippers.