By Jovanna Brinck
Courier Columnist
In Madly by Amy Alward, the Princess of Nova, Evelyn, has to marry someone in order to be able to rule the land. However, she doesn’t just want to be married off to anyone, like her parents want her to be. She decides to make a love potion that will make her best friend, Zain, fall in love with her. She doesn’t love him, at least not in that way, but he’s better than any of the other choices her parents have picked out for her.
When she goes to give the potion to Zain, she accidently potions herself instead, and falls madly in love with herself. She doesn’t realize she’s in love with herself; she just thinks this girl has the same name as her and she can only be seen through reflective windows and mirrors.
To turn her back to her normal self, her parents summon the greatest alchemists in the land: including Samantha, an old-fashioned potion mixer; Zain and his father, the owners of the largest synthetic potion incorporation; and Emilia, a banished royal that is next in line to take the throne if the princess dies. Whoever makes the potion that will cure Princess Evelyn first will win a large amount of money and magic powers.
The race begins to find all the rarest ingredients to create the potion. They will have to travel to forests, other countries, and out to sea to find the right ingredients to reverse the effects of the first potion. Participants in the hunt, the “Wilde Hunt,” do not play nice, and will result to hurting the others, both physically and emotionally, to make sure they don’t win.
I didn’t expect to enjoy Madly as much as I did because it isn’t really the type of genre I read often. This book is partly fantasy, but I would describe it more as a magical realism book. It was both funny and intriguing trying to figure out how this race was going to pan out. The only thing I didn’t like about this book is that the ending is a bit cheesy, but that didn’t bother me too much.
This book, in any means, is not a book that should be taken seriously. The whole idea of the Princess being in love with herself and not knowing it is hilarious on its own. If readers start this book with that in mind, they will enjoy it much more.
I would recommend this book to anyone in the mood for a light, fun read. Also, if you enjoy magical realism, you will enjoy this book very much. Overall, Madly was very entertaining and I look forward to reading the sequel that should be coming out this August.
