just finished: Princess on the Brink by Meg Cabot

I wanted to read the final "Princess Diaries" book and needed to catch up, so I started skimming Princess on the Brink and somewhat to my surprise wound up reading the entire thing. I've always found Mia too annoying and the plots too repetitious to truly like the series, but the fact that other people called her on her cluelessness and immaturity was a real saving grace in this one. If you consider her as a form of unreliable narrator, it becomes much more interesting. Also, for once her predicament actually seemed worthy of all the angst it created. And--some funny. I enjoyed her creative writing teacher's comments on her melodaramatic outpourings: "Mia, while this is highly imaginative, in no way does it satisfy the assignment, which was to describe a beloved pet."