The Princess Knight by Cait Jacobs Published by Harper Voyager on October 14, 2025
Genres: Fantasy
Format: eARC
Source: Netgalley
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A princess desperate to win back the prince who broke her heart follows him to his kingdom's prestigious military academy—and in doing so, falls in love, saves the realm, and continues to look fabulous in this delightful debut fantasy.
Domhnall and Clía are an ideal match—or so everyone says. They are prince and princess of neighboring kingdoms. An alliance the gods will smile on. Until Domhnall ruins everything by refusing to propose.
Heartbroken but determined, Clía makes the perfect plan: Follow Domhnall to Caisleán Cósta, the military academy he’s attending. Show she can protect her kingdom. Secure the betrothal. Sure, the castle has a brutal reputation. But how hard can dueling really be?
Warrior Ronan promised himself he’d never lose his focus. He fought and sacrificed for his place at Caisleán Cósta, and he has no time for blonde princesses who waltz intro arenas like they’re attending a ball. Even if she and her otter-like pet are…well, cute.
He doesn’t want to be intrigued by Clía. But her hunger to prove herself is something he understands. He tells himself there’s no harm training her. Even if his heart does race around her. Even if Domhnall is his best friend.
But as they say, love is a battlefield—and unfortunately for them all, a very real war is looming on the horizon. It’s a fight that will threaten all their kingdoms…and test all their hearts.
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Why Did I Read?
This book was originally titled Medievally Blonde, and was marketed as a medieval Legally Blonde retelling. Legally Blonde is an all time favorite movie so I was sold! Due to what I assume are legal reasons, the book has been retitled as The Princess Knight.
My Thoughts:
Well things got off to a rocky start when I was inundated with a lot of names: of people, countries, entities, regions, all in the first 5-10% of the book. The story has a medieval Irish background so the names were really hard to remember, in addition there is simply a massive amount of info dumping in the first section. I pushed through.
Unfortunately, things didn’t improve tremendously. The story centers around Clia, who has her betrothal broken by Domhnall, because she isn’t serious enough and he needs a serious warrior queen. Clia decides to follow him to a renowned military school to prove she could be that fierce warrior. It sounds good, right? However, I feel like the story followed the plot of Legally Blonde so closely it was to the detriment of THIS story. It almost felt like this story was being forced into following the plot of legally blonde instead of a natural retelling. It felt like it was to the detriment of having this story be told. In the last quarter of the book, events deviated (war is decidedly different than a court case) and that felt much more natural.
Now, the characters were individually fine. But as I rewatched legally blonde after reading this, the thing that made the movie so good was Elle. Elle had such a big personality knowing exactly what she was after, she was charismatic and quirky, determined and funny, and throughout the movie, showed a great arc of growth. She made the movie what it was. Clia couldn’t hold this story up. Clia was .. fine. But she was also a little bland. She likes fashion and wants to learn to be a warrior. I needed to see more of that. I wanted to see personal pursual of her growth as a warrior vs only some private training sessions with Ronan. Speaking of, for such a renowned military school did they ever have any other classes? I’ll be honest, I was skimming by the second half but they had less classes than Fourth Wing.
Ronan is the stalwart captain of the guard for Domhnall. They’re friends. I liked Ronan just fine. But him and Clia as a thing was just okay? I love captain of the guard / training montage tropes but I wasn’t drawn into their relationship emotionally.
This book is also very long. At one point I saw I was 300 pages in but only barely over 50%! I think the story could have benefited from cutting parts of the first half. By the time anything interesting happened it was 70% in and I was in it just to finish it.
This book is supposed to be adult but felt VERY YA. I think if it HAD been YA, it would’ve been better! It could’ve had a coming of age character arc and self discovery theme. I’m not sure, it just felt YA but with older characters.
Now, despite all my issues with this book, I will say it had great queer and neurodiverse rep (and perhaps disability rep, whether it be a magical ailment or autoimmune issue with Ronan). I always appreciate the diversity rep.
In short:
This fell short for me based on variety of reasons and could have stood better with less stringent parallels of the Legally Blonde plot. I did buddy read this with a friend who enjoyed it more than me, so if a fantasy medieval retelling of Legally Blonde sounds intriguing to you, this could still be a winner for you!
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