Empress & Aniya

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Even when she’s assigned as a ‘friend’ to the bubbly Aniya she remains brittle and clams up, limiting herself to a plate of chips at lunchtime because that’s all she can afford. Forced by one of their teachers they spend a lot of time together and quite quickly they become friends, despite all their differences and their entirely different upbringing.

The Guardian Young adult books round-up – review - The Guardian

The two teenage girls accidentally cast a spell on their 16th birthday and end up switching bodies, they quickly learn that friendship is the most important magic of all. The magical realism element came completely out of the blue with no real explanation but hey - I don’t really wanna criticise that. This book is a real-life account of the life of former Czarina Alexandra of Russia, written by her first maid in waiting. Unintentional, but I really struggled to try and put my feelings about this book into words because they were so mixed.But trauma comes knocking and with it a whirlwind of choices that will define what kind of a woman she truly wants to be. Following directly on from the cliffhanger ending of Crossfire, multiple narrators bring things to a bold, heartbreaking but ultimately satisfying finale.

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On the first page we’re shown Aniya to not be very receptive to having Empress as a friend but a couple of pages she’s doing anything and everything for her - it just felt a bit haphazard. Lol) ANYWAY, B2B—The prose is very simple, a little overly simple for my tastes IMHO, but that DOES make it super readable! I think though this book as marketed as young adult, it definitely fell towards the younger end of that spectrum. Her words sustain a quest for something new, something undiscovered, veering towards a mystical fascination of the unexplored.I think that this was such an important fiction read for young adults, well everyone, to read, to open your eyes to situations that happen every day but you might not think of. ANOTHER THING THAT ACTUALLY DROVE ME CRRRRAZZZZZYYYYYYY, was that there was some 'witchy' stuff (WOO FOR BLACK GIRL MAGIC, BABY! Listen, I KNOW we had magical spells and I wasn’t hung up about that but this… I don’t know how to feel but I don’t have ridiculously positive feelings I don’t think. While other wives were secluded behind walls, Nur ruled the vast Mughal Empire alongside her husband, and governed in his stead as his health failed and his attentions wandered from matters of state. The plot just felt like it got a bit far fetched, a bit too dreamlike and utopian and completely unrealistic.

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Lovely characterisation with a true emphasis on feminine friendship- something that I don’t think gets quite enough credit. She studied Media at Sussex because her sixth form teachers said that she wasn’t clever enough to do English, but she showed them all by first working at the Guardian Guide and then moving into publishing at 23. I think it captured the coming of age and the angst of growing up well - there were moments in here I found extremely relatable from my own adolescence.To be honest it was fun and made for an interesting turn of events so I don’t really care about the logistics of it really, I loved it.