I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS ONE! 
 In this well-written, fun fairy-tale adventure, young Rapunzel sneaks away from Mother Gothel for reading lessons from a dashing, but grumpy, young knight, who will eventually have to rescue her from a tower and bring her home to her long-lost parents. 
 I was drawn to this book by the beautiful cover (what fairy-tale lover WOULDN'T be?) but was unsure if I would care much for it or not. After all, I was greatly disappointed by the last novelization of Rapunzel I read (aka "Zel") and even though I enjoyed the humorous Wendy Mass novel, it is directed at young middle grade kids and I've always wanted a take on the story with more meat to it. 
 Sadly, the only "meaty" Rapunzel I ever found, previous to this one, was a detailed PICTURE book that brings the Grimm brothers' story to life with touches of the Italian renaissance. 
 This book, however, was just what the doctor ordered. Beautiful, rich, and filled with likable heroes and loath-worthy villains. 
 Rapunzel herself is a great heroine. She can throw knives and is a surprisingly tough cookie, but the story doesn't go the usual route of these kinds of retellings and make her a Katniss-esque badarse. It was nice to see girlishness and spirituality and meekness shown as positive traits in fiction for once instead of as weaknesses the heroine must overcome. Sir Gerek is a likable love interest for her with a well set up (AND JUST AS WELL RESOLVED) backstory. You could really see why they'd end up together; it was very believably depicted. 
 I've noticed a number of reviewers on here complaining about the overdone religious aspect of the story, but it actually didn't bother me. So the characters are religious and pray a lot and love the Bible. There are worse things, you know. There is a passage or two that does come across in a way that makes you wonder if the author is so religious herself she has to wear stain-glasses to read the Bible (little Muppet joke there!) but it doesn't distract from the brilliant story so who cares? Most of the time, I found it kind of nice. 
 Though I gotta admit, the glowing, talking cross was a BIT much... That was kind of random and did get an eye roll out of me. 
 Still, maybe being a Bible-loving person myself along with having read other so-called "Christian-view fantasy books" before (such as Narnia), I'm not really of the audience that takes issue with religion in fiction in the first place. 
 I think fans of Tangled will enjoy this book as well as the stories share some fun similarities I won't spoil here for those of you thinking of giving this delightful novel a try. 
 Highly recommend. 
 (On a side-note, I hadn't realized this was part of a series when I picked this up, so now I am just dying to read the other books; since I've already started out of order, I think I'll just go by whatever fairy-tale I feel like reading a retelling of next, maybe the Snow White one, since I've been dying to read a good novel version of that and haven't found one I've liked since "Fairest" by Gail Carson Levine)