Bingo 1: Dreams
Starting in the center because 1) it fits my most recent read, and 2) it’s not bad bingo strategy. Dreams and prophecies are common in fairy tales, and The Cursed Princess Club (v.3), being the fairy-tale riff that it is, is no exception. The main plot this time deals with Gwen getting her portrait painted by Lord Leopold. Gwen is the third princess but she’s different as the third child always is, but in her case her difference is that she’s not the conventionally gorgeous princess that her sisters are. Leopold wants to be a romantic rival for her affection, but Gwen seems to have friend-zoned him even as she’s struggling both with her feelings about herself as well as for her fiancée Prince Frederick. Prince Jamie, Gwen’s older brother, keeps interfering in the portrait process for reasons of his own. Leo ends up playing therapist a bit.
The other two related plots progressing are that Frederick is starting to work out his own feelings, both about Gwen and himself, and he ends up getting therapeutic assistance from an intriguing source, who might have a possible connection to the Cursed Princess Club. That’s another plot thread, that the club is starting wonder if Gwen might actually have a curse, and maybe it has something to do with her absent mother. There are some interesting mysteries and conflicts being set up, but much more than this would be spoilers. This is actually kind of the fun of the series, that you can see the trope coming, but given that there is a good deal of riffing and goofing on such tropes, you have to wait and see what direction is actually taken.
So for the dreams, there are two literal dreams in the story. One is Frederick’s, after he falls asleep reading a book of fairy tales, and has a fairy-tale dream starring himself and Gwen. But when he wakes up, he can’t quite remember what might be an important part, since he’s actually in a sort of fairy tale already odds are that was foreshadow-y. The second dream belongs to Princess Nell, whose curse is that she has premonitions that are almost always negative, and often come true. She’s already had one vision about a member of the club dying, and the volume ends with her having a presumably related or extension vision in her sleep (cliff hanger!).
I could probably go more into the metaphorical dreams, since nearly every character has them, but watching everyone pursue their dreams and discovering what the right thing/person for them really is is part of the fun of the series, so we’ll just leave things at that.