Rating: ☆☆ 1/2
Audience: Contemporary romance
Length: 454 pages
Author: Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Release Date: April 7th, 2015
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads
BOOK SUMMARY:
“I might be Cinderella today, but I dread who they’ll think I am tomorrow. I guess it depends on what I do next.”
American Rebecca Porter was never one for fairy tales. Her twin sister, Lacey, has always been the romantic who fantasized about glamour and royalty, fame and fortune. Yet it’s Bex who seeks adventure at Oxford and finds herself living down the hall from Prince Nicholas, Great Britain’s future king. And when Bex can’t resist falling for Nick, the person behind the prince, it propels her into a world she did not expect to inhabit, under a spotlight she is not prepared to face.
Dating Nick immerses Bex in ritzy society, dazzling ski trips, and dinners at Kensington Palace with him and his charming, troublesome brother, Freddie. But the relationship also comes with unimaginable baggage: hysterical tabloids, Nick’s sparkling and far more suitable ex-girlfriends, and a royal family whose private life is much thornier and more tragic than anyone on the outside knows. The pressures are almost too much to bear, as Bex struggles to reconcile the man she loves with the monarch he’s fated to become.
Which is how she gets into trouble.
Now, on the eve of the wedding of the century, Bex is faced with whether everything she’s sacrificed for love-her career, her home, her family, maybe even herself-will have been for nothing.
UNIMPRESSED.
We had a pretty good start then things just went downhill.
I liked the beginning. It was cute! Meeting at college, getting to know a new country and being truly on Rebecca’s own (without her twin). I honestly thought this would have been dragged out longer over the course of the book. Mostly because I was leaning towards that being that point of this romance. How they met, fell in-love, etc. What I got was…not what I was expecting.
About halfway is when things sunk, but I was far enough in that I decided to go ahead and finish it out. The Royal We could have easily been 100 pages (at least) shorter. There was an incredible amount of focus on the media. I understand that it plays a big role in all of their lives, but with how much it was discussed it got boring and repetitive. Not to mention the only characters I liked were Cilla and Gaz. And they were side characters.
Not to mention, with the way it ended, I think it as meant to be romantic and spontaneous. What it really portrayed was a relationship with a bunch of band-aids. There wasn’t enough of the romance with Nick and Rebecca having sincere and productive conversations about their difficulties.
I really just struggled with this one for a lot of reasons and I don’t want to continue listing them. This wasn’t the romantic normal girl turns princess trope I was hoping for.
Overall audience notes:
- Contemporary fiction + romance
- Language: some strong
- Romance: kisses / make-outs; a lot of closed door scenes
- Trigger warnings: loss of a parent, and a parent suffering from mental health issues
Instagram || Goodreads
GoodeyReads 