At the tender age of 17 Jacqueline Pascarl-Gillespie was whisked away to a marble palace in Malaysia by the dashing Prince Raja Bahrin. From the moment they married the charming, loving man she had fallen in love with in her native Australia turned into a cruel, uncaring horror who raped and beat her regularly while she, bearing the title of Princess Yasmin, was forced to suppress her intellect and maintain a public facade of aristocratic solidarity.

Following the birth of her two children, she returned to Australia, but far from walking toward freedom, she found herself enslaved again by a bitter custody battle which led to the eventual kidnapping of the children by Prince Raja Bahrin who returned them to Malaysia, where, seven years on, they still live without any contact with their mother. Once I was A Princess is 500 pages of almost unbearable pain. This harrowing autobiography of one woman who had to lose her own children before she truly found herself is not only a bitter account of a life of constant disappointment which begins as a child and builds to a death-defying crescendo in her adult life, but is also a story of love and passion so strong that a fight to the death seems almost inevitable.

A remarkable woman whose daily battle for her children has never lost momentum, Jacqueline has also found the courage to move on, setting up charities for children around the world and finding the strength to help other parents whose children have been taken from them. She is indeed a woman to be reckoned with. But behind the strength lies a sad, sad lady whose incredible past certainly makes for good reading, but is totally secondary to the fact that she is just a mother who, quite simply, wants her children back. --Susan Harrison

2007-09-12 Straight talking and brilliant read

This woman's book was an eye opener for me. A female friend gave it to me and I found myself drawn into Ms Pascal's descriptions and amazing journey - her experiences really made me understand the love of a mother much more deeply. She describes the moslem world in detail but still doesn't bag the religion at all even though it was used as justification to kidnap her children, Eden and Shahira.
I'm now looking forward to reading her second book, Since I was a princess.