Blog Tour (Review): Only Prince Charming Gets to Break the Rules by Anne Beall

I received a copy of Only Prince Charming Gets to Break the Rules by Anne Beall for an honest review. What follows is my opinion and mine alone. There was no compensation for this review.

I’m a sucker for folklore. It doesn’t matter if it is an adaptation, an in depth literary study, or, in this case, a statistic review on who gets to break social norms and for what reason. That’s the big thing you need to realize about this book, it is a nonfiction statistical review on well known international folktales. What makes this so interesting is the sociological value on what is accepted in society and how that impacts our storytelling.

There isn’t much to say about the book that you wouldn’t know from that paragraph alone, but I’ll try.

It is well written and filled with information that has you seeing the connections between different cultural stories. Filled with graphs and explanations, it felt like I was reading the script of a documentary on the value of folklore for society rules. And believe me, it’s important. If anything, it made my heart happy to see the empirical value of my own beliefs on folktales.

This book is the perfect reference for a sociologist or literary nerd trying to work on that big paper about folklore. Another good thing about it, is that it wasn’t boring. It also helps that it was short.

If you like the mix of statistics and literature, check this book out. I genuinely learned something, even when I figured out just who gets to break all the rules and why.