What to read after “The Princess Diaries” by Meg Cabot: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
Japanese American teenager Izumi Tanaka has never felt she belongs. Then she learns that her father, whom she has never met, is the Crown Prince of Japan. Izumi travels to Tokyo to meet her royal family, where a strict bodyguard and endless protocol complicate her new life.
Eliza Mirk is shy and friendless at school, but online she is the anonymous creator of a popular webcomic. When Wallace, a fan and fanfiction writer, transfers to her school, Eliza begins to imagine a life offline. Then her secret identity is exposed, and the fragile balance between her two worlds collapses.
Sixteen-year-old Simon Spier is keeping two secrets: he is gay, and he is falling for an anonymous classmate online. When someone discovers his emails and threatens to expose him, Simon has to navigate friendships, family, and first love while trying to find out who Blue really is.
In the kingdom of Carthya, a nobleman gathers orphan boys and tells them that one must learn to pass as the lost prince Jaron, or die. Sage is quick, defiant and unwilling to play the part, but the game he is forced into has rules no one has told him, and a prize worse than a crown.
Alizeh hides in plain sight as a servant, keeping the secret that she is heir to a lost magical kingdom and the subject of a prophecy she wants no part of. Kamran is the crown prince, bound to protect his grandfather's throne. He does not know who she truly is, and the truth could destroy them both.
Cath starts college separated from her twin sister for the first time and takes refuge in writing fan fiction. Between a new roommate, a classmate who keeps showing up, and her father's struggles, she slowly learns to live beyond her stories.
Shy Maddie Gracechurch invents a soldier suitor to escape the London season and writes to him for years. Then the real Captain Logan MacKenzie appears, demanding the bride he never knew he had. To keep her home, they marry as strangers, and the arrangement slowly becomes something more.
Daisy Bowman must find a husband this season or her father will send her to America. The suitor he has chosen is Matthew Swift, a cool businessman she has disliked for years, and as the two are thrown together in London, their old quarrel turns into something else.
Lara Jean keeps private love letters to the boys she has liked, never meaning to send them. When the letters are mailed, she pretends to date one of the recipients to save face, and the game begins to feel real.
On a crowded New York day, Natasha, an undocumented Jamaican immigrant facing deportation, meets Daniel, a Korean-American student on his way to a college admissions interview. They spend the day together, falling for each other as their plans and families collide.
Anna is sent to a boarding school in Paris for her senior year, though she barely speaks French and misses home. There she falls in with a circle of friends and develops feelings for Étienne, a charming classmate who is already taken. Their closeness makes staying just friends harder every day.
Penelope Featherington has watched Colin Bridgerton from the edge of every ballroom for years, certain he will never see her as more than his sister's friend. When Colin returns to London, their long acquaintance begins to change, and the secret behind the ton's anonymous gossip sheet threatens to upend them both.
Marco Loristan lives in London with his exiled father, a Samavian patriot. With his friend the Rat, a street boy, Marco carries a secret sign across Europe to help restore Samavia's rightful king. The journey tests both boys' courage and loyalty as danger follows them from border to border.
At ten, Miranda Cheever was told she had no great beauty to look forward to. At twenty, she is still quietly in love with Nigel Bevelstoke, the viscount who once comforted her and who now believes he is done with love. Her diary records a patient hope that he might finally see her as a woman.
Hazel Grace, a teenager with terminal cancer, meets Augustus Waters at a support group. Their cautious romance grows through shared wit and a planned trip to Amsterdam, while both confront what they can and cannot control.
Melisande Fleming has loved Lord Vale from a distance for years. When he is jilted at the altar, she offers to marry him, expecting a practical union and nothing more. Vale accepts, but his guarded bride proves more complicated than he imagined, and the secrets they both keep threaten the marriage.
Ruthie Midona runs a retirement village and keeps her life small until the owner's tattooed, easy-going son, Teddy Prescott, is installed in an on-site cottage and made assistant to two eccentric residents. Teddy has no plan and no filter, but his warmth slowly coaxes Ruthie out of the careful shell she built around herself.
Viola Astley is so painfully shy that her first London season feels like a trial. She dreams of a quiet vicar, but a compromising moment with the reclusive Duke of Wynter leaves her engaged to a man she barely knows. As Viola finds her voice, she discovers the duke is not the cold stranger society believes.
Lady Felicity Faircloth was once the toast of London; now gossips have left her a spinster wallflower. A chance encounter with Devil, a powerful Covent Garden criminal, leads to a bargain: he will help her catch a duke if she helps him settle an old score. Neither expects the attraction that follows.
Sixteen-year-old Vivian is a werewolf living with her pack in suburban Maryland. She falls for Aiden, a human who is drawn to the supernatural, while the pack expects her to mate with Gabriel. A murder near town threatens to expose them all, and Vivian must choose between two worlds.
Eleanor is the new girl on the bus, with mismatched clothes and a chaotic home life; Park is the quiet boy who lets her sit beside him. Their friendship grows through shared comics and mix tapes into a cautious first love, threatened by her abusive stepfather.
In 1987 El Paso, two Mexican American boys meet at a swimming pool and slowly become friends. Over long summers they share books, secrets and fears, and each begins to understand the love and longing he has been afraid to name.
Raised in hiding, nineteen-year-old Kelsea Raleigh is summoned to claim the throne of the Tearling. With only her loyal Queen's Guard, she must cross a dangerous land, win over a distrustful people and face the Red Queen, who wants her kingdom destroyed.
In a future kingdom divided into castes, thirty-five girls are chosen to compete for the crown. America Singer enters only for the money, torn between a secret love back home and the young prince she is slowly getting to know.
Start with “Tokyo Ever After”, “Eliza and Her Monsters”, “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda”: they are the closest to “The Princess Diaries” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “The Princess Diaries” these are Hidden Heir, Coming of Age, Wallflower Heroine), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “Tokyo Ever After”, “Eliza and Her Monsters”, “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
