4.5 stars! I am delighted that this is a series, I just love our Princess in Black and she is just a great heroine, and I just want more and more books about this princess.

Because while I love princesses, I do love a kick-ass princess even more! A princess who next to looking nice, wearing cute clothes, also loves kicking monster's butts! And doing that in fashionable black clothes. Her attacks have wonderful and interesting names like; Tiara Trip, Tentacle Tangle, Sceptre Spank, Twinkle Twinkle Little Smash. And you kind of feel sorry for the monsters, just a tiny bit, they shouldn't have gone up to nom on goats in the first place. :)

And in this book our dear princess is celebrating... well actually the better term would be, tries to celebrate her birthday with all her princess friends. Sadly, the monsters are particularly active today, and the poor princess has to keep going in and out, all the while trying to distract her guests from the fact that she keeps disappearing. I just felt sorry for the girl. Finally it is her birthday, everything is perfect, she got great guests, presents that need unwrapping, and then you have the monsters who just don't get the freaking hint that this princess just wants to celebrate her birthday.

I loved the games, the birthday, and I was cheering for our princess. I do wonder if the other princesses are also secretly monster butt kicking princesses, or if our princess is the only one. You would think there may be others just like her.

I didn't like Princess Sneezewort, not at all. I found her annoying, nosy and frustrating, and very depressing. She is also a big reason for the -0.5 star. I think if she wasn't added, or didn't poke her nose around, or acted all depressing, I would have given the book 5 stars. But as it is, I just couldn't give it a 5 star rating. It is a shame, the rest of the book is just amazing, and so much fun that I was sad when it ended.

The illustrations are gorgeous yet again, and I love all the clothes that the girls wore, they were so vibrant and pretty. The decorations, the castle, the presents, everything was just so colourful and fun, I wish I could have joined the party it looked so much fun!
I liked that not only did the story tell us how tired the princess got, how worn out she was, but that we also could see it in the illustrations. How she went from perky and happy, to sad and tired.

The ending? I just loved it, that poor monster, but he had it coming. It was sweet what he did though, it is good to see the monsters aren't all goat-eating-baddies, but instead can also be nice.

Would I recommend this book? Yes! Definitely yes!

Review first posted at http://twirlingbookprincess.com/

I love this series. What I love the most: a prim and perfect and pink princess becomes... the Princess in Black! She fights a ton of monsters in this new installment, with the monster alarms continuously interrupting her birthday party. In the end, the idea that a "normal" "girly" girl, one who likes friends and presents and pink and glitter rings, can also be a kick-butt action hero is perfect. And as a recent article pointed out while talking about the newest Star Wars, this is the PERFECT book for boys. Because while girls need role models like this, boys need them, perhaps even more.

What I dislike: Princess Magnolia's unicorn is named Frimplepants. Frimplepants turns into... Blacky. BLACKY!?! Not "Midnight" or "The Dark Horse of Doom" or "Pony Avenger," but .... "Blacky." So disappointing. (I just looked back at my thoughts on PIB1 and found that this frustration is merely a continuation of that which I felt after reading the first in the series. I guess it's too late to change his name now.)

I also wish the Goat Boy had a little more oomph. He lost a little personality in this second book. And while I loved seeing the party guests show up as different cultures, it was distracting to look at them all and wonder whether they were overstereotyped. Clearly, more diverse books means that we (hopefully) won't need every book that pokes a toe in that direction to be everything and do everything, but in the meantime, it would be nice to have a Monster-fighting Princess surrounded by culturally diverse characters who also defy their stereotypes.

Bonus: I found this gem on Shannon Hale's Goodreads page: http://oinks.squeetus.com/2015/10/bonus-secret-epilogue-to-the-princess-in-black-2.html

I'm going to leave this one unrated.

This was published in 2015 and there are a few moments where that truly shows. I'm not sure how adults can read this in 2024 and not see this. I understand that this is a beloved series, but there are a more than few things that made me cringe while reading this book. I enjoyed the first book, but I'm not really sure how things went wrong with this particular installment.

the darn monsters always get in the way.

This brilliantly shows the difficulty of balancing a normal thing like a birthday party next to the exhausting life of fighting monsters. We are introduced to Princess Sneezewort, who is delightful, and a cast of 12 princesses, who are wonderfully diversified.