Good books make you ask questions. Bad readers want everything answered.

She wasn't here to gawk. She was an infiltrator, a sneak, an ugly. And she had a mission.

And the worst thing was, there were no mirrors out there in the wild, so the princess was left wondering whether she in fact was still beautiful... or if the fall had changed the story completely.

Your father always suspected that being pretty-minded is simply the natural state for most people. They want to be vapid and lazy and vain—Maddy glanced at Tally—and selfish. It only takes a twist to lock in that part of their personalities. He always thought that some people could think their way out of it.

You can't blame a match for a house made of straw, Alek.

And it was pretty clear that no prince was showing up, or at least that he was really late.

What did a happy ending even mean in real life, anyway? In stories you simply said, 'They lived happily ever after,' and that was it. But in real life people had to keep on living, day after day, year after year.