Princess in Love is the third novel in Meg Cabot’s young adult Princess Diaries series. The series centers on the life of a teenage girl who discovers herself to be the heir to the monarchy of the fictional European country Genovia. Published in 2001, the novel, written in diary format, picks up a month after the previous novel in the series stops, and covers about a month in Mia’s life. Navigating learning how to be a princess and dealing with the romantic stops and starts typical for high school, the protagonist comes more fully into her own. Mia Thermopolis, a fourteen-year-old freshman in high school, is the granddaughter of Queen Clarisse of Genovia (Grandmere). Because of this lineage, Mia’s life is split between making her way through high school and training to be a public figure intimately involved in the politics and governance of a small country. As Princess in Love opens, Mia is preparing for the fact that in a month’s time she is supposed to go to Genovia and formally declare herself to be the heir to the throne. This involves learning intricate ceremonial duties and protocols with Grandmere and getting measured for formal gowns. Mia finds this process tedious, while her grandmother expects perfection. Mia’s family life is undergoing some changes as well. Her mother, Helen, has recently married Mia’s algebra teacher, Frank Gianini, and is now pregnant with Mia’s future half-sibling. At the same time, Mia is caught in a romantic entanglement that started in the previous novel. After her biology partner, Kenny Showalter, sent her a series of anonymous love letters, she felt obligated to start dating him once he revealed himself as their author. Kenny is nice enough, but Mia doesn’t actually like him in that way. It’s clear that she needs to break up with him: she knows stringing someone along isn’t kind, and she actually has much stronger feelings for someone else. On the other hand, Mia is happy to have any boyfriend at all since all her friends seem happily paired up as well. The object of Mia’s true affection is Michael Moscovitz, a senior who is the brother of Mia’s best friend, Lilly. Mia can’t stop thinking about him, especially when she finds out that he has started dating Judith Gershner, a biology genius who figured out how to clone fruit flies. Unable to cope with her jealousy, Mia consults her family and friends for advice. In a way, this turns out to be a positive thing, since it brings her closer to her Genovian family: her father, her Grandmere, even her cousin, Sebastiano Grimaldi. She ends up taking her grandmother’s practical, if not particularly selfless advice: to keep dating Kenny and not rock the boat emotionally in order to get through final exams. Connecting with Sebastiano turns out to be a mixed bag. On the one hand, Mia realizes that he isn’t plotting her assassination despite being second in line for the throne. Instead, he is a fashion designer who designs some of the fabulous gowns she will eventually wear on her Genovian tour. On the other hand, while she is trying on his dresses, Sebastiano takes photos of her, which end up in the newspaper. Grandmere is upset at this breach of decorum, and Mia is furious at Sebastiano for trying to use her celebrity for his own advancement. She stages a press conference where she announces that all the proceeds from Sebastiano’s clothing line will be donated to Greenpeace. The situation with Michael also brings Mia closer to her friends. Inspired by Kenny’s machinations, Mia decides to send anonymous love poems to Michael, and her buddy, Tina Hakim Baba, comes through to help her. Tina confides in Lilly about these poems – and Lilly eventually tells her brother who has been sending them. This seems like a betrayal at first and feels in line with Lilly’s often critical and brusque treatment of Mia. However, it turns out that Lilly does this because she knows that Michael returns Mia’s feelings, and Lilly is trying to get them together. At the school Winter Carnival, Michael approaches Mia with a computer game that makes it clear that he knows that she’s the one who’s been sending him love letters. Michael tells her that he feels the same way about her. However, to Mia, this abrupt declaration is overwhelming, and she assumes that Michael is just making fun of her. Running away from the dance, Mia bumps into Kenny and breaks up with him. Horrified by everything, she gets home and sits out on the fire escape, refusing to go to the Winter Carnival dance. Instead, she wants to leave for Genovia the next morning. Grandmere talks her down from this drastic decision, convincing Mia to go to the dance. The novel ends as at the dance; Mia and Michael share their first kiss.

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