Release Date: August 27th 2014
Published By: Penguin Australia
Pages: 336
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Rating: 2 out of 5

Synopsis: Lily’s had a charmed life so far, and now she’s off to London to pursue her dream of becoming a great actor. But life at the London Drama Academy is full of surprises – and for the first time, Lily finds that things don’t always go her way.

It’s not just the other students who are making life difficult. Lily’s got a secret she’s not sure how to handle, but she finds that a room in one of the Academy’s deserted towers makes a perfect refuge. Lily can’t stay locked in the tower forever, though. And when she meets the mysterious Ronan Carver, everything starts to change . . .

A fast-paced modern fairytale and companion novel to The Cinderella Moment, from talented YA author Jennifer Kloester.

Review: The Rapunzel Dilemma. A companion novel to The Cinderella Moment, and my first Jennifer Kloester book. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed.

I found the novel to just be ok. There was nothing to really scream home about.

I found most of the characters to be way underdeveloped. Lily came across as spoilt, childish and frustrating. Where I should have started liking her more as the story went along, I instead found her annoying, and grew to dislike her more and more.

I had very non-feelings towards Ronan. For most of the novel, he was made out as this very *mysterious* character. All his back story was revealed at once, and I just couldn’t really sympathise with him. I also felt that there wasn’t a huge amount of chemistry between Lily and Ronan.

The dialogue itself came across as stilted and occasionally repetitive (in that characters would find out something, we’d read about it and then they’d reiterate the discovery to another character). I also found the plot mildly predictable.

There were, however, definitely moments that were endearing (I’m looking at you, Dover scene). The school itself looked fascinating, and I feel like you could tell that the author definitely put in a lot of research.

While I didn’t enjoy the novel, I do see it as being really popular with a younger audience. 2 stars.