Princes have pomp and glory—not murdered secretaries and crushes on commoners Nothing gets London's high society's tongues wagging like a good scandal. And when the personal secretary of the visiting Prince Sebastian of Alucia is found murdered, it's all anyone can talk about, including Eliza Tricklebank. Her unapologetic gossip gazette has benefitted from an anonymous tip about the crime, prompting Sebastian to take an interest in playing detective—and an even greater one in

If you were enchanted by the wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry and you’ve picked this up looking for an authentic-style royal romance, forget it. There is nothing remotely resembling royal protocol in this book. Thorne’s father renounced his claim to the throne of ‘Torino’ where apparently the locals speak French, despite the Italian name - and left for the US. Now his brother is dead and there is no other heir, so… his middle son has to take the throne? Due to some c

This is, in some ways, very formulaic and predictable. Playboy prince sleeps with girl-next-door type and an accidental pregnancy results. Of course, they have to get married to the future prince or princess will be in line for the throne. Where this book is different is that there are no contrived and wildly unlikely plot points just to make things work. This is really cleverly thought out and every action by the two leads, Marco and Chloe, is a completely logical step to ta

The Highlander's Princess Bride is both a charming Regency romp and a searing indictment of male attitudes towards women's rights in the period, and I absolutely loved every word of it. It has everything you might want from a Highlander romance; a sexy, brooding Scotsman - in fact, a whole family of seven brothers - a clan laird, a castle, and more kilts than you could shake a skean dhu at. Where things get interesting with this novel is with the princess in question, because

Sarah and the Secret Sheikh is a romance that hits a fair few of the tropes - sheikh romance, secret baby romance, etc. It also does a fabulous job of turning some of those tropes upside down. Sarah is your everyday Australian girl, but a one-night-stand with Majed, the enigmatic and sexy man looking after her friend's bar for a while, leaves her pregnant and unsure of what to do next. Admitting the truth to Majed brings a whole new set of issues into play when he confesses

Once upon a fairy tale, Merlin put King Arthur and his knights into an enchanted sleep, to await a future time when they would be needed. I think the line I recall was 'to defend Britannia in her darkest hour'. However, what would happen if some wealthy entrepeneur happened to buy up the church where the knights lay in their enchanted sleep and relocated the whole thing lock, stock and barrel to the United States? Camelot is now on American soil, and as the knights begin to w

So I have this secret passion for royal romances... wait, what do you mean it's not a secret? *considers my Goodreads library* OK, you might have a point there. All right, I have a not-at-all-secret passion for royal romances, but a distressingly high proportion of them are not very good. The last one I read (Pretend Princess) was absolutely dire. The Doctor and the Princess is absolutely FANTASTIC. I loved the premise - a 'spare' princess, not wanting to be a mere ornament,

I had a bad moment about 10% of the way into reading this book when what I call my 'Christian Grey radar' went off. (For the record, I'm in the '50 Shades of Creepy Abusive Stalker' camp.) The heroine, Charlotte, proposes an affair to the hero, Brooks. She's a (minor) princess, he's a social-media-famous journalist she already knows is a chronic over-sharer. Her only pre-condition for the affair is that he must not share 'intimate' ie. nude, photos of her. His response? To st

I'm still in a state of incredulous WTFery about this book. There are so many completely bonkers plot points in it that I spent most of my reading time shaking my head. Let's start off with the location. Cordillera is apparently a small country 'sandwiched between France and Spain'. OK. Not the worst location for a fictional small country with a fictional monarchy. I can buy that. I can't buy that any country in modern-day Western Europe has a law 'forbidding women to wear tr

This is the first in a three-book series called The Royals of Solana; the second book, Jewel Of Solana, is released on March 17. Solana is a fictional island kingdom in the South Pacific, which makes it an interesting departure from most fictional romance book royal kingdoms; they are usually European in scope. Solana's history is explained during the story, though not in an info-dump sort of way, just a few light remarks which nevertheless give the kingdom a reasonably logic