Royal Bridesmaid! Royal Crown (From the Notebooks of a Middle School Princess) by Meg Cabot

I knew something was going to go wrong----something besides my having to entertain my awful cousin Lady Luisa all day (and night), I mean.

It seems like my family can never have an ordinary, universally televised state function without it turning into a disaster.

It's not easy being a seventh grader and a part-time middle school princess, juggling two very different lives, but since Olivia Grace Clarisse Mignonette Harrison Renaldo learned that her older sister Mia was going to be the new ruler of the tiny, ancient Mediterranean kingdom of Genovia, she has known that being a royal princess was part of her otherwise fairly humdrum life. But now big sister Mia's coronation is near, and Olivia, with her BFF Nissi along, are spending their winter holidays in the sunny seaside palace, and things are far from boring.

The cousins on the Alberto side of the family, having secretly exhumed their ancestral founder, are suing Olivia's side of family, claiming that their DNA is a closer match to the first Genovian ruler, Rosagunde, the warrior princess who saved Genovia from the Visigoths in A.D. 568. It's two days before the coronation, and Olivia, is looking forward to wearing her haute couture gown and carrying her sister's coronation train of state. Instead she finds herself in the middle of a Game of Thrones drama, intensified by her snooty cousin Luisa, who flaunts her "maturity" and her boyfriend Roger, the twelfth Duke of Marborough, and taunts Olivia because the boy she likes, Prince Khalil, has never even kissed her.

But Olivia gets one up on Luisa when she and Nissi discover Luisa, wearing her bikini and the Royal Crown of Genovia, jumping on Mia's bed while Duke Roger records it all on social media.

Roger, the Duke of Marborough, was snapping photos of Luisa as she jumped on Mia's royal bed, wearing the multi-million-dollar crown of Genovia. Beneath both their feet lay the Robe of State!

"Oh, yeah!" the duke was saying to Luisa. "Work it, girl! Work it."

Grandmere Grimaldi is scandalized, the crown and the royal robe of state have been besmirched publicly, the lawsuit for the throne is pending, and Olivia is afraid that Prince Khalil may not want a disgraced royal for his girlfriend anymore.

Uneasy is the head who wears the crown, they say, and even for the young maid of honor for the intended monarch, being a royal isn't all accolades and caviar, in Meg Cabot's latest in her series, Royal Crown: From the Notebooks of a Middle School Princess ( Feiwel and Friends, 2018), illustrated by the author. Author Cabot, famous for her Princess Diaries series, has delivered a royally funny sequel to her series, From the Notebooks of a Middle School Princess (see review here) and Royal Wedding Disaster: From the Notebooks of a Middle School Princess. Family life is complicated for young royals, and in this lighthearted middle-reader novel of a New Jersey girl who leads two lives, the sensible Olivia is bound to be everyone's favorite part-time princess.