The restaurant is closed for renovations—of course—but there's a boy there, too. A very cute boy with a posh British accent who looks remarkably like the errant Prince Theo, on the run from the palace and his controlling mother. When Wren helps him escape a pack of tourists, the Prince scribbles down his number and offers her one favor in return. She doesn’t plan to take him up on it—until she gets to the airport and sees cancelled flights and chaos. A comet is approaching Earth, and the world is ending in eight days. Suddenly, that favor could be her only chance to get home to her family before the end of the world.
Wren strikes a bargain with the runaway prince: if she’ll be his bodyguard from London to his family’s compound in Santorini, he can charter her a private jet home in time to say goodbye. Traveling through Europe by boat, train, and accidentally stolen automobile, Wren finds herself drawn to the dryly sarcastic, surprisingly vulnerable Theo. But the Prince has his own agenda, one that could derail both their plans. When life as they know it will be over in days, is it possible to find a happy ending? (Pub Date: Jul 11 2023)
Wren goes to England on a program, just like her high-achiever sister did, and she has a comprehensive itinerary to ensure she'll have as good an experience. But out of the ten days, none of them go right. Even her best friend hasn't been such a bestie, having found other people while Wren was sick for half the trip. When she realizes her last day won't go as planned either because the place her sister had the best breakfast ever is closed for reformation, Wren is ready to just go home. And that's when she meets, and helps escape from the paparazzi, the crown prince. But even Wren's plan to go home fails. A meteor is coming to earth, the airport is a circus of madness and she loses her flight. So, she calls in the favor her prince promised he'd return. That's how they end up traveling incognito to the island where the prince has a plane that will take Wren home to her family, while the whole England is searching for their missing prince, and the whole world is despairing they only have a few days of existence.
Phew. That summary was so long and I'm not sure I'd understand any of it... But the trope is the following: American girl is a (failed) planner meets runaway prince for a trip from England to an island in Greece in middle of the end of the world.
Half this book was worth four stars. And the effort the author put in creating scenarios that would make their trip harder was also worth it. However, I feel the book slowly lost me. I like the banter between them, but even that loses meaning along the way. The traveling with a prince trope could have been better used, for example, because it didn't feel as swoonworthy as you'd expect of it. I'm not even sure where the apocalypse thing made a difference to the plot, when Wren could have found a way back without the prince nonetheless. We have a line of side characters that don't add anything, plus a lot of things happening that make even less sense. I still don't get how Wren could miss her flight when she is how she is, and she keeps missing her transportation as it goes, so it wears off the free pass you give authors for bluffing so it doesn't get boring.
This isn't a typical YA romance, if you're looking for something slightly different without going too out of the comfort zone, but maybe I wanted something more like Anna and the French Kiss when I read international program plus British guy, and Theo was disappointing as a British guy. And I don't think he ever has any character development. He disappointed me as a guy too. He seems to be so sweet, and complex too... But it turns out he isn't. These kids are in the middle of the literal end of the world, and they barely seem affected by it—which made the trope very useless.
It's hard to point out one thing that caused my like for this book to decrease. Maybe it's a general issue that the plot got too out of control. Still, it is a fun read. Like, what else is going to happen to them?? I think the ending was okay, but there is a small thing there that bothered me, like it was left open on purpose for maybe a second part, when it could have been solved in a paragraph. But it's a minor annoyance. I still liked the book. But it was close to being better, and that's the saddest feeling when you finish a read.
Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.
Rating: 4 out of 5.
No comments:
Post a Comment