Prince William, Maximilian Minsky and Me by Holly-Jane Rahlens

Prince William, Maximilian Minsky and Me by Holly-Jane Rahlens
Buy Prince William, Maximilian Minsky and Me by Holly-Jane Rahlens at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Teens
Reviewer: India Fearnley
Summary: Nerdy Nelly enlists the help of rebel Max to help her get onto the basketball team in order to get chance to go to England, and meet Prince William.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 256	Date: May 2007
Publisher: Walker Books Ltd
ISBN: 978-1406305470
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Thirteen year old Berliner Nelly Sue Edelmeister is the novel's nerdy, ambitious yet highly likeable heroine, and future cosmologist. She's not interested in boys, that is, until, she sees a photo of England's most eligible royal - Prince William. She becomes obsessed with the prince, and believes that she should be the one to care for him in the aftermath of his mother's death.

When she hears that the girls' basketball team will be touring in England, she sees it as her chance to meet her beloved and sets about her training.

The only problem is - Nelly Sue cannot play basketball.

So she enlists the help of Maximilian Minsky, the new kid on the block who dresses like a vampire but is strangely attractive, to train her to become a basketball superstar. And on top of all this, she has to prepare for her Bat mitzvah and deal with her rowing parents.

And when things take a turn for the worse and tragedy strikes, can Nelly still come out on top?

Rahlens has created a brilliant teenage heroine who is easy to relate to and will inspire the younger readers to keep going. Nelly Sue is faced with problem after ridiculous problem but still manages to keep her enemies at bay and reconcile with her difficult parents, a topic that will be relevant to the majority of Rahlens readers.

Prince William, Maximilian Minsky and Me is a charming novel, filled with anecdotes that capture the voice of 13 year old Nelly Sue beautifully. There are moments in it which every older reader will think, yes, I've thought that or that's happened to me and it's this characteristic which makes the novel so likeable.

It's true to say, however, that the original idea, of the infatuation with the Prince, was not as fully explored as it could have been, as are some of the novel's sub plots and ideas. Too much is left to the imagination at the end, which is fairly disappointing, as the novel has a fairly anticlimactic ending, which does add an air of real life to it, rather than the clichéd Hollywood endings which so often blights our television screens and literature.

Although I thought that the initial idea of the book was a bit, well, dull, it manages to steer away from the royals (for a bit at least) and gives you an insight into Nelly's life, which is the most enjoyable part of it. It induces laugh out loud moments, wistful sighs and even the odd tear.

For more books on the so called troubles of teenage life, why not try My So Called Life.

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