I Am Princess X

★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2
This book starts off just like the book description tells you – it's practically an outline of the first 40 pages. Somehow, even if all they were doing was fulfilling the book jacket copy, the opening chapters sucked me in more and more with each detail until the last sentence on page 35. That line was just creepy. At that point, I put my finger in the book to save the page, called to my daughter (who'd showed minor interest on the book) and told her that unless Priest screwed things up, she had to read this (and seriously , what were the odds of Priest doing that?).

Years after the death of her best friend, Libby, May starts to see drawings around town of something the two had created together (and no one else knew about). How is that possible? She does everything she can to find out, but that doesn't tell her anything other than that there's a (pretty popular) webcomic out there starring their creation. There's a self-proclaimed computer guru (Patrick – he prefers Trick, though) living a few floors below her dad that May hires/cons into going the extra technological mile for her. Their investigation doesn't remain online, and before long the two are running all over Seattle. They dance between employer/employee; condescending college-aged twerp/younger, slightly naive teen; pals throughout in a way that seems organic and real. It's probably the most realistic thing in the book after the death of Libby. While I'm talking about them – the hijinks the pair get into in the cemetery result in either the funniest or the grossest line of dialog I've read this year. Possibly both.

This isn't the kind of comic/prose hybrid that Jeff Kinney, James Patterson, Stephen Pastis, etc. are doing – Priest uses the comic pages (taken from the fictional webcomic) to further the plot, to help us see what May and Trick are reading/seeing. Rather than trying to describe (and likely not succeeding all that often) a series of panels and the artwork, we just get them. Shorter, sweeter, to the point. A great merger of the two media. Ciesemier's art is spot-on, I could easily read a webcomic she draws.

This is a YA novel with no love triangle, no romantic love period – that's practically enough of a sales pitch for me right there. Friendship – that's the emotional core driving this. The old friendship between Libby and May, that death hasn't changed too much; the budding friendship between May and Trick, and another one that's in spoiler territory. Nowhere along the lines is there even a whiff of anything else between these characters. What a breath of fresh air! There's some actual parenting (not perfect, but humans trying) along the line, too – a couple of pretty good dads – something else I don't see a lot in YA. So yay there, too.

It's an implausible story grounded in three real characters (May, Trick and May's dad) – and a couple of others that could have been as grounded if we'd gotten a few more pages from them. For the story this is trying to tell? That's just enough to carry it.

We see the villain enough to find him threatening and somewhat believable, learn enough about him to support that, but not enough that we can develop any sympathy for him – he's mostly shadow, which frequently feels like under-writing or a cheat by the author. But here it felt like a device to underline the threat he poses.

This is pure escapist adventure reading – no muss, no fuss, no frills. The story matches the medium of a webcomic pretty well. Sure, it could've been a deeper, more reflective novel – or even a slightly more realistic one. But it doesn't need to be. Have I rated better written/constructed novels lower than this? Oh yeah. But this novel was exactly everything it promised to be, everything it needed to be. This grabbed me from the start and didn't let go until it was done.

As an added bonus for people like me, I'm pretty sure there's a tip o' the hat to Robert B. Parker in these pages. That just brought a smile to my face.

I wanted really badly to be madly in love with this book. It came so highly recommended to me by a dear friend. It's closer to 3.5.

Some Things that I loved:
Loved the comics– so good also the art work started out ls if they were drawn with chalk and then became more refined, digitally processed to go with the story
Loved details and there were instances of imagery/literary devices (etc) that I highly enjoyed, such as ‘that she'd somehow kick free of the sinking car and clawed her way to the surface through the night-black water, cold as a soda from the fridge, the city lights sparkling above her like stars.'
That in the comic Princess X's parents were alive... At least in the beginning
That there wasn't a romance and the flirting (?) was bearable
I LOVE purple
It did keep me reading and wanting to know what came next, even as I worried that it might be predictable.

Some Things that annoyed me to varying degrees:
They had to look up what Lyukemia was, they're supposed to be about 17 and 18, they should know what bone cancer is, this creates an imbalanced perception of their characters' intelligence and is thus is a weakness of the author's writing, there are other instances of odd knowledge or lack of. I understand that these might be instances of informing the reader, but they feel uneven and unnatural.
The working in of the character Trick was poor. She sees a flyer, sees a potential need that she might have to call him in the future and then immediately has some lame computer issue, like a dead battery that she doesn't even try to do anything about, at all.
There were times where I had to reread passages because it was confusing what space/setting the characters were in, it made me feel like I was watching shakycam footage, which gives me a headache.
May mentions that she is writing a book in the beginning, it is never mentioned again.
May's character contradiction, it seems like she is addicted to soda, enjoys pizza, takes the bus (sometimes needlessly) but is somehow this amazing runner without really even trying.
May doesn't seem to care or fully realize that Trick never told her that he had been in contact with Jack (lie by omission) which seems to conflict with her obsessive nature to find Libby.
Even though May is obsessed with trying to find Libby she can't seem to finish reading Princess X, I understand that this might be a pacing technique that the author is employing, it's just not a believable one. May is convinced that her BEST friend is still alive, finds a unique relic of their shared childhood, and even though it's summer and she has NOTHING to do she can't pull an all nighter reading a webcomic that might lead her to Libby? That makes her a bad friend.