>>6430573The Melissa de la Cruz novels are good--I'd even say the first one is really good, the other 2 are more twee since they were written after the first film came out and they were influenced by the film's tone but are still much better than the series/films/series offshoot books--but the rest of Descendants is... what it is.
The first book had things like
-In-depth, or in depth for a tween novel, look at the dynamics of villains having children and how that impacts said children
-So, related to above, emotional abuse and in some cases physical abuse
-Exploration of the isle's culture and politics and the results of treating the isle like secondhand garbage
-Carlos having an actual personality
-Character conflict that made sense and was resolved in an organic way
-Character cameos that made sense. Gaston's teen children--he had 3, damn it!-- weren't pirates (seriously wtf is going on there) but sports players who chased teen girls around like Gaston's proper children should
