"The Midnight Blizzard" by Mary Mecham

Awwww, this was exactly what I wanted to read during the week between Christmas and New Year's.  Sweet, funny, upbeat, and cozy.  And with lovable dogs galore!

Noelle has no intention of trying to get the prince to fall in love with her.  She wants to spend the week of the future-wife-finding-balls and parties searching the castle for any trace of her father's will, which has disappeared.  She's quite sure her father would have left her his estate so he could continue his work helping mages get more equal rights.  

In this kingdom, mages are people who can do magic, and ordinary people are suspicious and distrustful of mages.  Mages and non-mages can't marry, and mages aren't even able to attend most schools.  Noelle and her father were working together to change all that, but his death may have derailed all of that.

Noelle's stepmother ditches Noelle and her dog Kodiak in the middle of the forest, where they're attacked by wolves.  Kodiak is injured protecting Noelle, but they're both rescued by a handsome mage named Jack and his team of sled dogs.  After getting Kodiak to a healer, Jack takes Noelle to the castle.  While he helps her try to find her father's will, the two of them start falling in love, but marriage between mages and ordinary humans is forbidden, a law Noelle's father was trying to get reversed before he died.

This is a Cinderella retelling with a Christmasy twist, though it's really more wintery than Christmasy.  It's the first thing I've read by Mary Mecham, but I am sure it won't be the last.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for some kisses and yearning.  No smut, no real cuss words (just fake ones like "by holly"), little violence (there's that wolf attack, and at least one slap).  I let my 13-yr-old read it as soon as I finished it, and she thought it was really fun, though it did have a bit more romance than she prefers.  That makes sense, since it's a young adult book, and she's not a young adult yet.