Cloaked

Cloaked by Alex Flinn, 2011 HarperTeen

     Johnny Marco repairs shoes in a hotel in South Beach, Florida. His family's shoe repair shop is struggling, so Johnny works his summer away helping his mother to make it through. Johnny's best friend Meg works in her family's coffee shop across the hall. When a princess from Aloria, a small country somewhere in Europe, stays at the hotel Johnny and the hotel's pool boy are entranced by the beautiful girl.
     One night Princess Victoriana stops by the Marco family shoe repair with a mission for Johnny: repair her favorite shoes, and deliver them personally. Johnny is excited as any seventeen-year-old boy would be, but when he returns the shoe the princess has a bigger task, and more complicated. He has trouble believing that Victoriana's brother has been turned into a frog and kidnapped by the local witch in Aloria, but when she offers Johnny marriage and financial security he is willing to go out on a limb for the crazy beauty.
     Until she presents him with magical tools, Johnny doesn't believe her brother could have been transformed, let alone transported from Europe to southern Florida. With a magical cloak and earphones that allow him to communicate with once-human animals, Johnny travels to the Florida Keys in search for the missing prince. There he discovers a talking fox named Todd who asks Johnny to complete a task before giving up the information.
     After helping Todd with his task, being kidnapped by the evil witch who transformed Victoriana's brother, being rescued by Meg, fighting giants, and being chased by a homicidal maniac on a motorbike, Johnny returns to Victoriana with her brother in tow. But his adventures didn't prepare him for not wanting to marry the princess.
     With traces of The Elves and the Shoemaker, The Frog Prince, and several other fairy tales Cloaked is a fast-paced story where the characters fall from one crisis into another. Readers of all ages will wonder: What will Johnny chose when his quest is over?