While Beauty Slept

Elizabeth Blackwell has written a clever retelling of the classic Sleeping Beauty story.
While Beauty Slept tells the fairytale of Sleeping Beauty from the viewpoint of the Queen's lady in waiting. 

Elise Dalriss is sitting with her granddaughter telling her the story of her life, and clearing up any misunderstanding about what really happened in the castle so many years ago.  This is really the story of Elise and how her world changed when she found out as a young girl, she was really the illegitimate daughter of royal blood. 

Elise lives with her mother and her mean hard driven father and her brothers in a small shack.  There is never enough food to feed the family and the furnishings and clothes are modest at best.  But one day Elise's mother lets slip that this is not Elise's real father, that her mother was shunned by the people in the King's castle when she found herself pregnant and had to leave the life of luxury for this life of poverty.  When the black plague happens and her family lays dead, Elise escapes to the city and finds herself a position at the castle.  No one knows her secret, but maybe some suspect, because she rises quickly to the job of lady in waiting to the Queen.  It could be just that she is a hardworking  and loyal subject, or the King's angry sister, Millicent could have some dangerous magic working behind the scenes.  There is also the King's other sister, Flora who tries to lessen the intensity of Millicent's power. 

Of course there are princes and love at first sight and all the trappings of living in a castle.  The gowns and jewelry.  The balls, festivals and parades.  In the end the there is a princess who is sleeping and a prince with a kiss, but though the at court believe Millicent's power is strong, Blackwell gives us a more realistic reason for the castle to be empty and all the people there to seem asleep. 

This is a interesting idea for a novel.  An enjoyable plot with great twists.