Book #19

Cloaked by Alex Flinn

337 pages in
Popular Fiction
So this is by the author who wrote Beastly, she does mostly retellings of Fairy Tales. I have no idea which one this is, unless it's a mixture of many.At the beginning of each chapter there is a quote from a fairy tale so maybe it is a mixture. Some of the quotes come from "The Elves and the Shoemaker," "The Frog Prince," "The Six Swans," and something called "The Salad." There are more too but I have never heard of them. Anywho, the book is about this boy who works at a shoe repair store in a hotel, and he loves shoes. No, he's not gay, he just thinks they are awesome. His best friend Meg works in a coffee shop across the hall and they like to collect quotes that mention shoes, some of my favorites include: "Our incomes our like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us, but if too large, they cause us to stumble and to trip"-John Locke, "Mama always said you can tell a lot about a person by their shoes. Where they're going. Where they've been."-Forrest Gump. The book starts out with a princess who comes to the hotel and Johnny really wants to meet her, and he does. When she is making her enterance she notices him and he gets to talk to her. Later that night he is working late, to help try and pay the bills, when the princess comes into his shop with a broken shoe. She is drunk and gives him a lot of money to fix it. The next morning he brings it to her room and when he meets her she tells him a crazy story. Her brother has been transformed into a frog by an evil witch and she wants him to find the frog and bring it to her so she can get her brother transformed back. At first he thinks she's crazy but she gives him a lot of money, with promise of more to come, and promises to marry him. He is also given a magic cloak that can transport him anywere and he doesn't think any of this until he wishes he was just home and suddenly he's there. This simple act makes him believe all the rest so he agrees to help the princess. He gets info from some swans who used to be humans and he is on his way to Key West in search of the frog. He talks to a fox, fights witches, and almost gets eaten by giants. His best friend turns out to be a witch who also transforms the prince back once they find him. In the end he finds his long lost father and gets his dream fashion shoe designer business started. Oh yeah and he gets the girl but i'll let you figure out which one it is.

In the Author's Note of the book there is a list of all the fairy tales that are used and a description of them:

"The Elves and the Shoemaker" "The Frog Prince" "The Six Swans" "The Golden Bird" "The Valiant Tailor" "The Salad" "The Fisherman and His Wife"