Demon Princess: Reign or Shine

Michelle Rowen

Demon Princess 1

Bloomsbury (2010)

ISBN: 9780802795342

Reviewed by Tansy Rayner Roberts, May 2010

This is a tricky one.  I started out thinking it was utterly vapid, and I say this as someone who regularly reads Gossip Girl novels for fun.  The character seemed shallow, boring and utterly mundane.  Supposedly a usual outsider who just happens to have lucked out and made it to the ‘popular’ group at her new school, Nikki struck me as a third rate Bella – pretty, well-off, no problems, and yet has a bit of a self esteem problem to make her seem more human.  She’s had a hopeless crush on a boy at school who is perfectly amenable to asking her to the dance.  Life is sweet.

Even when the mysterious stranger turned up to tell her she is the long-lost daughter of a demon king, and is about to come into her own demonic powers, I remained unmoved.  But slowly, slowly, Nikki started to grow on me.  She doesn’t have the wit of Buffy, or the delicious viciousness of Blair and Serena, but she does have horns, and you have to respect that in a girl.