Cloaked by Alex Flinn

Johnny Marco works at his family's shoe repair shop in a fancy Miami hotel. It's tough work, but he has to do it to help his mom pay the bills for their apartment. Then one day famous Alorian princess Victorianna stays at the hotel and asks Johnny to repair her broken shoe. Upon returning it to her, she asks him to help her find her kidnapped brother. Johnny finds it hard to say no to the beautiful princess and agrees to help. But this is no ordinary case, and Johnny gets a lot more adventure than he bargained for! With the help of some magical items and his best friend Meg, Johnny travels all over Florida and back in search of a prince-turned-frog.

If you've never read Alex Flinn, but you love a good fairy tale retelling, start with this book! She has previously written Beastly, a high school version of Beauty and the Beast (and a soon-to-be-movie), and A Kiss In Time, a modernization of Sleeping Beauty. I totally loved those two books and got swept away in this one as well. Cloaked includes many fairy tales, but the big ones are The Frog Prince and The Elves and the Shoemaker. A combo that works out surprisingly well! There was plenty of whimsical magic and non-stop action. Putting the old fairy tales into modern day Miami was fantastic and well thought out. The voices for each of the characters were excellent, their accents sometimes making me laugh. I thought all of the different fairy tales would add up to be too much, but they were small and sweet and added to the adventure as a whole. Flinn ties up all loose ends into a neat little package that left me feeling feeling complete at the end of the book. A fun read!

Overall Rating: 5 Stars