Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle
Beverly Bartlett
5 Spot, Mar 2006, $12.95
ISBN: 0446695599

Isabella Cordage is your typical Yale University student, except perhaps bit clumsier than most and has a childhood friend who happens to be royalty. That royal, Prince Raphael of Bisbania, proposes to Isabella, who accepts, which turns her into fish bait for the media sharks especially the tabloids. When she trips on a stairwell, they dub her "Princess Dizzy Izzy".

Bella becomes sick of royal life, which is so formal she cannot breathe yet so under the microscope she feels like a pinned butterfly yearning for freedom. She needs to escape so Isabella decides to return to her carefree Connecticut college roots, but running away is not an option; besides knowing how much that would hurt her husband because royals don't leave. Instead she invites a friend from her college days, Geoffrey Whitehall-Wright, an American car mechanic, and his wife Mac to relocate to Bisbania. Geoffrey and Mac agree, but rather quickly the gossips believe the princess and the mechanic had an affair at one time and that they have reignited with a tryst as they seem more than just old friends while he just innocently sings her advice via Springsteen.

This is an amusing chick lit look at being a royal in a media world that wants to expose everyone's mistakes, transgressions, and innocent encounters, all to titillate a buying public. Though at times inane with pratfalls that seem just silly, the storyline overall is exciting, dizzying and fun as Isabella struggles with her role as a person of interest. Beverly Bartlett provides a regal tale that feels as if Princess Di in the earlier years of her marriage landed in a chick lit palace.

Harriet Klausner