The Restless Girls

Reviewed By  Janet Mawdesley       December 3, 2020

 

Author  Jessie Burton. Illustrations Angela Barrett.

Distributor:      Bloomsbury Children's Books
ISBN:                 9781526618474
Publisher:         Bloomsbury Children's Books
Release Date:   October 2020  

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Released in 2018 as a hard cover edition The Restless Girls from Jessie Burton with elegantly crafted illustrations from Angela Barrett, returns to the bookstores as a slightly smaller paperback edition, telling the very modern fairy-tale of the twelve daughters of Queen Laurelia’ who died in a motor accident and their father King Alberto, a man so sunk in grief he could not bear to consider that anything terrible may befall his beautiful daughters.

He is so fearful that he has them locked in a special room where nothing at all can harm them, which was all very well for their father, not for the girls, as their mother had always encouraged them to be independent and to think for themselves.

The Restless Girls is a skilful combination of old and new as the story of Princess Frida and her sisters look at their options, their dancing shoes and what they would like to achieve in life, if or once or when they get out of the rooms their father keeps them in.

As in all good fairy stories, modern or otherwise, there is dashingly handsome Prince, a rather excellent plot, a fantastic ending and in this case a good dose of magic involved, which encourages the girls to believe in themselves and their dreams, but most importantly to have the courage to do something about it by using the things that can never be taken away; their ideas, their wits and their spirit of adventurer.

Based on the traditional The Twelve Dancing Princesses from the Brothers Grimm, this is a modern adaptation to enchant and also, as in all fairy stories, carry a message to those reading the words that courage, family, bravery and imagination are things that never ever go out of fashion.