I had to go straight from LONG LIVE THE QUEEN to LONG MAY SHE REIGN, I can't say how much I adore these books. Meg's struggles are inspiring, her wit and passions are entertaining, and White's writing is so vivid and fresh I know I'll return to these books again and again.

3/6/2012: A quick pause for some new releases, then I'm off to THE ROAD HOME. I really wish the rest of White's books would come out in an eFormat, I'd love to have these in my phone for instant-comfort-read moments.

3/15/2013: It looks like March is my White re-read trigger, I love following Meg's recovery all the way through to college. ( )

A few weeks ago, when I learned that there was a 4th book in The President's Daughter series that I read and loved as a teenager, I knew I had to read it. It was addictive reading -- I stayed up too late reading it several nights and had a hard time putting it down. I wasn't disappointed -- it was fun to get into the main character's head again, with her humor and deep thoughts. It was also interesting to see her off at college -- and dealing with issues of sex as well as recovering from her ordeal in book 3. ( )

I am so excited! I read the first 3 in this series like one million times as a kid, and now there's a new one!

...and it was surprisingly great. I stayed up till 430am finishing it.

(Oh, and PRESTON! I forgot about Preston. I love love love him. I want a whole book about him.)

Those of you who missed this series back in the 80s, you should really check out the first one, [b:The President's Daughter|247959|The President's Daughter (1984 Original)|Ellen Emerson White|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1183599284s/247959.jpg|240253].

It's about a girl whose mom becomes the president of the US. And as you might imagine, it's not always that much fun. ( )

I liked it, but I wasn't as enthralled by it as I was the other 3. It was really loong, and there were times when I felt that it was unnecessarily descriptive. But it seemed extremely realistic to me, and I appreciated.

Thumbs down on Jack though, what a lame boyfriend. Of course, I also thought that they were going to give us Meg/Preston toward the end, especially since I was absolutely sure they were constantly hinting at it, but maybe that was all in my head. ( )

Meg Power's mother is the President of the United States. If that weren't enough to prevent one from having a normal life, 6 months ago Meg was kidnapped by terrorists - brutalised, starved and left for dead. Now she has a seriously injured knee and a smashed hand, emotionally traumatised and suffers from horrific nightmares. Instead of going away for her first year of college and doing the sports she loves, she's stuck in the White House, her days filled with physical therapy, struggling with classes she dislikes at a local university, and awkward family mealtimes.
Meg decides that - ready or not - she needs to get her life together. But college is not easy when everyone knows your story, you are accompanied everywhere by body-guards, reporters camp outside your door, your political science class is full of people who take cheap shots at the current administration, and you are in constant terrible pain, struggle to walk and wake everyone up at night with your screaming nightmares...

Long May She Reign is actually the fourth (and so far, final) about Meg and I have to say, it stands very well on its own. The back-story unfolds slowly but everything important is explained (and I kept reading also because I wanted to know what had happened to Meg beforehand ). I was looking for books about university students, and I expected it to be an average YA, neither as long nor as dark as it is. It's a tome of a book - one which could have been edited drastically, but I'm glad it wasn't. (I like details.) It's third person but we're very much inside Meg's head. Although this means it's not remarkably poetical or original prose, the novel's tone is Meg's - intelligent, acerbic, 18 years old and slightly humorous. I think these are the things I loved about Meg - that despite being a traumatised emotionally and physically, she's smart, cynical and funny and still a believable teenager.

It is about the slow process of healing. Meg is struggling so many things: trying to be a normal college student when she is the last thing from normal, her difficulties recovering physically and emotionally, strained relationships, her unhappy shattered family, making new friends and dealing with the press, and the way her public and private lives have intersected.
I really liked Meg's close friends - including a couple of her new friends - and her family The Powers' family relationships are deeply complex; resolving familial conflict is a slow, complicated process, and yet, underneath everything, there is so much love. But love is complicated further by trauma and politics. It's a moving and believable portrayal of family.
The story is more 'adult' than some YA, which perhaps shouldn't be unsurprising, given Meg's traumatic past and that she's a college student. I thought this aspect was realistic and left me understanding where Meg was coming from.

Ultimately, I was impressed and liked it much more than I was expecting to. It was gripping, both moving and humorous, and very thought-provoking. The sort of book you put down, only to pick up again, or continue thinking about. It's the sort of book I want to talk to other people about. The ending was satisfying - there are several emotional and satisfying scenes, actually - but I want to read more! Why is there no next book?

I'm not desperate to the read earlier ones, partly because I'm afraid they wouldn't be as good (and because I know quite a bit about what happens in them) but I'm interested. I'll keep an eye out for them, certainly. And in the meantime, I'll certainly recommend Long May She Reign.

(A longer version of this review which includes quotes from the novel can be found on my blog). ( )