Twenty-eight-year-old Tessa Sharpe, a.k.a. The Royal Watchdog, hates everything about Prince Arthur. As far as she’s concerned, he’s an arrogant, lazy leech on the kingdom of Avonia. When he shocks the nation by giving her the keys to the castle, Tessa has no choice but to accept and move in for two months. It’s lust at first sight, but there’s no way she can give in to her feelings—not if she wants to have a career or a shred of pride left when her time at the palace ends…
Can two natural enemies find their forever in each other’s arms, or will they ruin each other to save themselves? (Pub Date: May 23, 2017)
Why did I take so long to get to this wonderful comedy?
3.5.
Since she was unfairly blocked from more official jobs as a journalist, Tessa has been trying to grow as a blogger/vlogger, and her biggest revenue is The Royal Watchdog, where she expresses her critical views on the existence of the royal family. Prince Arthur has always kept to the public but now the Prime Minister wants to extinguish monarchy he'll have to take drastic measures. That's how Tessa ends up invited to live in the palace for two months, in hopes she'll change her view and of her followers'.
Of course, this is still chick lit and there's not much that will discern it from many others. Even though the authors try to apply a realistic view of the prince's daily activities, which was very interesting, it wasn't anything new. To be honest, as a journalist, Tessa was very naive to think he'd just sit there all day long.
By the way, a lot of the headcanon of how a royal family works this book reminded me of a m/m romance I loved, His Royal Secret. I'm not criticizing—to be honest, I loved going back to that world, especially since the author never wrote anything else after the duology. The things is that the similarities made me aware of plotholes. The most prominent example is Arthur's sister, who he describes as fragile and implies something may have happened to her before. If the series meant each book would explore a different character, I'd understand that was a teaser for the second number, but it's not the case. What we see from the princess is a quite strong-willed woman—the very opposite of what happens in His Royal Secret, where these very words eventually developed into a dramatic subplot plus reason for, well, let's stop here and go back to this book.
What I mean is that we had a lot of ways the plot could have deepened but never did. I'm sure some of those won't be dead ends and will come in later volumes, but it made the book seem to go to next level and in the end I was disappointed that was all.
My other issue was the unnecessary drama due to stupid misunderstandings. I thought we had left the cliche behind a decade ago, so I felt impatient having to go through the same drama any Hallmark Chanel movie will repeat ad nauseam.
In any case, this was still a very enjoyable romantic comedy. I may have my problems but it was just that I started the book and I could immediately see the quality. I honestly wasn't expecting, and that's why in the end I took it seriously. But as a pleasure read, this is perfect. It'll keep you entertained with that silly smile we want when getting books like this to read. Also, we have a pig for a pet, how different is that?
I highly recommend this to any fans of romantic comedies.
Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.
Rating: 4 out of 5.
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