Wildwood Dancing

Wildwood Dancing is a 400 page book by Juliet Marillier. It is a story loosely based on the fairy tale The Twelve Dancing Princesses. It is about five sisters who live in a manor by a forest and every full moon they go to another world where they meet several magical creatures and dance. However, they have an evil cousin who is trying to take over their manor since their father had to leave for awhile to help his health. Also, the eldest sister falls in love with a person from the other world.
The protagonist in this story is the second oldest sister, Jena. She is strong-willed and a leader. She is constantly fighting her cousin so that she and her sisters can keep control of their house. Jena does not like being ordered around is portrayed as the main leader of her family. Although she is kind and compassionate and is always trying to help her sisters and make them happy, she has a very hard time letting her eldest sister Tatiana leave their world and go and live in the other magical world so that she can be with her true love. Jena can also be quick to anger and can not forgive easily. But, overall Jena is a compassionate person who only has the best interests of her sisters in mind. This is best shown when Jena allows her eldest sister to leave and go to the other world without trying to stop her. Jena's intelligence and practical sense is nice because a lot of the other characters are not as practical and wise as she is.
It seems that a lot of the problems of the book are forced onto to Jena to try and solve. It is left to Jena to try and stop her cousin from taking over their manor and from trying to attack the magical world. All of her sisters let her deal with their cousin and expect her to solve all their problems. The eldest sister, Tatiana is to busy dreaming about her boyfriend to help and another sister only cares about the pleasures of life, such as eating nice food and having fun. Another sister is in some senses smarter than Jena, because she has classes and is a scholar, and though may give some advice now and then, she still leaves all the problems to Jena. The last sister is too young to be of much help. Although this casts Jena's sisters in a bad light, they do care about Jena and are kind, and are also a lot younger then Jena, except for Tatiana. The problems also could probably be best solved by Jena anyway.