Audiobook Review – Princess At Sea (Princess, Book 2) by Dawn Cook, Narrated by Marguerite Gavin (4/5 stars)

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins (368 pages)
Publisher: Audible Studios
Release Date: December 21, 2004
ISBN-13: 978-0441014248
Stand Alone or Series: 2nd book in the Princess series
Source: Audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 4/5 stars

“Assigned to chaperone Queen Contessa and her husband on their honeymoon, Tess takes on pirates who abduct the royal couple for ransom-unaware that Tess’s magic is the real treasure in their midst.”

This is the second, and final, book in Cook’s Princess series. I ended up enjoying it, although I though things wrapped up much too quickly.

I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was well done. I am still not a huge fan of the narrator, I just don’t like the voice she chose for Tess. However, she does a fine job differentiating between character voices and conveying emotion. This is one of those audiobooks I could take or leave; I think it would read the same in paper.

In this book Tess is assigned to take Queen Contessa and Prince Alex on their honeymoon. Along the way they are abducted by pirates. Through a series of events Tess’s involvement as a Player is threatened, once again spiraling her into self-doubt and forcing her to question who she really wants to be at heart.

I love the characters and enjoyed watching Tess struggle to understand who she is and survive her adventures at sea. This book is full of adventure and political intrigue. There is a heavy theme of love helping people to accomplish things that aren’t normally possible.

The end felt very rushed to me and was a bit unsatisfying. I felt like this might have made a better trilogy than a duology. Still, all the major plot points were wrapped up…if quickly.

Overall this was a decent conclusion to the Princess series. This was a fun book full of easy to love characters, adventure, and some light romance. I enjoyed the continuing theme of trying to find one’s place in the world. I thought the ending felt very rushed though. This is one of those fantasy series that was fun to read and I am glad I read it. The story is very engaging and it was hard to stop reading. However, there isn’t anything super unique in here and, despite being well done, it’s fairly forgettable.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Mount TBR Reading Challenge
– Audiobook Reading Challenge
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge
– YA Reading Challenge