Julie Stielstra

This short, delightful book transports readers into a medieval fairy tale. The story revolves around Vespasia, a rude woman who is cursed to live as a wasp after mistreating an old woman and her servant, Ginerva. Vespasia hatches a plan to become the Wasp Queen and live a life of luxury. However, her deception is challenged by the queen's young daughter and her dog, while Ginerva embarks on a quest to break the curse and restore the rightful queen.

Stielstra's enchanting storytelling, descriptive language, and engaging dialogue make "The Wasp Queen" an enjoyable and easy-to-read book as we follow the characters on their respective and interwoven journeys. The author's love for nature and animals shines through, adding depth and flavor to the narrative. While the plot is a bit simplistic at times, this novel will appeal to both teens and adults.… (más)

In a kingdom where magic hasn’t been seen much for years, a young girl casts a spell in anger and turns the unpleasant Lady Vespasia Marchand into a wasp. Almost immediately after the girl’s grandmother says how the wasp can transfer her essence to another person’s body, Lady Marchand’s servant lets the wasp go. Lady Marchand quickly sets about to stinging random people for fun while deciding who to take over. After a close call with a bird, she decides to replace no less than the queen herself. As the queen is a genuinely nice person, the change in her personality doesn’t go unnoticed for long, and the young princess is able to learn what happened due to an ability to speak to and understand animals.

This book frequently seemed to want to be two different things and was not helped by its attempts to be both at once. The more immediately obvious one is that, tonally, it seems to be caught somewhere between a fairy tale and a young adult book. Like in many fairy tales, just about every character is either unquestionably good and pure or (in the case of Lady Marchand) thoroughly unpleasant, nasty, and devoid of any redeeming characteristics; the only definite exception is a man mentioned in a flashback to explain the young girl’s missing father. On the other hand, there are matters either touched on or alluded to (ranging from some of the ways Lady Marchand treated her lady’s maid to the difficulties of changing tax laws without thinking through the consequences to adult relationships) that feel a bit beyond the audience for fairy tales.

Later in the book, it becomes obvious that the author wanted to tell two separate stories, both the one of Lady Marchand taking over the queen and the efforts at getting the real queen back and that of Lady Marchand’s lady’s maid becoming her own person once Lady Marchand has disappeared. The first story ends with nearly a quarter of the book left, while the second is hindered by having only been touched on a couple of times before the first story is resolved and the lady’s maid having little personality up to that point beyond long-suffering employee of the worst person in the kingdom.

At least one significant story detail apparently happens for no reason other than the story needs it to happen to resolve things; the princess’s ability to understand animals appears at about the same time as Lady Marchand takes over the queen’s body and vanishes once that story is resolved. There is also a habit, which I found annoying, of referring to the lady’s maid by her full name of Ginevra Hawkeshaw instead of just Ginevra the first time she appears in a chapter for most of the book.… (más)

What a delightful tale that takes you into a world that is very like the setting of many medieval times fairy tales or even an Aesop fable in a novel form. The main plot is that a curse is cast on a very rude woman named, Vespasia, who at the beginning of the story is rude to an old woman and Vespasia's servant Ginerva. This actually is a spellcaster like her grandmother before her. Because of Vespasia's rude behavior, the spellcaster turns her into a wasp and she is forced to see the world through this annoying and small insect's perspective. She cannot be rude to others in such a form, at least not in the way that she was before the curse, and the only way to break the curse would be to sting someone right on the neck and enter that person's body. Vespasia is cursed to never be in her own body again. She comes up with the idea of stinging the queen and becoming her so she can continue to live a life where she has luxuries and bosses her servants around. She becomes the Wasp Queen. The queen's daughter and her dog are very aware that the new wasp queen is not the real queen. Vespasia's servant learns that the wasp queen is the rude woman she was a housemaid to and she begins on a journey to figure out how to bring the old queen's soul back into her rightful body and break the curse that was cast. Will the wasp queen continue to reign or will they find a way to break the curse?

This book is easy to read and contains a well-thought-out story plot that is filled with wonderful descriptive language and dialogue. I enjoyed reading this book and felt the moral that the reader can learn from the tale was very well taught by the author. The author's love of nature and animals is also contained in this story as some of the fun of the story is seeing the world through the animals' and insects' perspectives in the story, such as characters like the wasp and the princess's pup. I would read this one out loud to my children. Very much enjoyed this author's writing style.… (más)

It is a fairytale. It is a fun story with a cast of interesting characters. The story moves fast and keeps your interest all the way through. I like the whole concept of it. There is someone to root for, someone to hate, and the conflicted character that you hope does the right thing in the end. The story was rather simple, in keeping with the fairytale feel. What let me down a little was the very convenient circumstance that came up without reason and disappeared when it was not needed any more (also without reason.) And the solution to the problem was simple and I knew it all along, as will most readers, while the characters seem unable to figure it out. But I still enjoyed the book. It is a fun. light read you will be able to finish in a day or two.… (más)