Geekerella Review (Once Upon A Con #1)

Elle has a stepmom and twin stepsisters that hate her. While her stepmom pays for the twins to go to 400 dollar tennis lessons but she won’t allow Elle to do anything but her housework and her job. Elle works at a vegan pumpkin truck with her only human friend Sage, and has befriended a dog next door named Frank who’s owner has all but abandoned it. She lives a rather lonely life, but the show Starfield makes it all bearable for her. She used to watch the show with her now-deceased parents, and go to a yearly cosplay convention with them. The show is getting a movie reboot, and while Elle is originally excited for it her dreams are crushed when she realizes that the soap opera star her stepsisters are obsessed with is starring as the dashing Prince Carmindor. She immediately goes on her Starfield blog and tells everyone how wrong it is for the soap opera star to be the one acting in the movie that everyone had been looking forward to for years.

Darien is a famous teen actor. He is usually forced into things by his father, but this isn’t a role he wants to be forced into. Before he became super popular, he was just a regular kid who loved Starfield and who would go to the conventions with his friends. Now he is the star of the new movie, is forced to get questions wrong in an interview just so he can get dunked and his female soap opera fans will be happy, and people on blogs are telling him his worst fear: that he won’t live up to the honor of Prince Carmindor.

When the two accidentally start talking due to a wrong number text message, everything changes.

I loved this book to pieces. Sometimes I look at the new versions of fairytales and simply see a dumbed down version or even worse, oversexualized, version of the original fairytales. This had the perfect amount of romance, while still giving each individual character their space to grow and mature in the story. I loved Elle, she never gave up even when nothing seemed to be going her way. I wish we had seen more of how the stepmother and stepsisters became the way that they did, but as in the fairytale there is no true explanation. Sage is supposed to be the fairy godmother, I suppose, but I enjoyed the fairy godmother having a more secure place in the story rather than just the “bippity boppity boo” fairy that disappears quickly. Darien had a deeper backstory than I expected, and I began to love his character for being his secretly fanboy self just as Elle was.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is in middle school and above. There isn’t anything inappropriate, and the only reason why I don’t say elementary school is simply because everyone is so much older in the story. I love this book and I hope you all get ot read it if you can.

Overall Rating: 6 out of 5 books.