I always love a good royal read of any kind and this was no exception! First I’ve read by Carolyn Rae and I’d definitely pick up another!

Uh...still puzzling over this one...and I DNF.

There were so many bizarre elements to this story that incredulity was my main feeling until about 40% in where I decided that my time was better spent on anything else besides reading this.

A fictional modern-day small Western Europe kingdom with very archaic views and laws on women. Prince Lawrence, the hero (???) was no prince, pardon the pun and was in need of a good slapping. Tricia, the heroine (???), was too NOT "I am woman, hear me roar". She fills in as a doppelganger for the missing Princess Alyssa, his cousin. You getting the yucks now?

At the junction that I decided to delete this from my Kindle, there was no growth to any possible saving grace to either of these characters character. Ugh. Sorry.

I had a very hard time getting into this book. I read about 40% before i finally gave up. It wasn't that it was a bad story but there was just no connection to the characters for me. Tricia was from the states and had traveled to this small country wedged between France and Spain and was approached by Prince Lawrence. Tricia looked so much like the Princess Alyssa, Prince Lawrence's cousin, that he didn't recognize that it wasn't her at first. The princess was missing and the royal family enlisted Tricia's help in posing as the princess until they could find what happened to her.

I may eventually finish the book, but probably not. I enjoy reading and want to be engaged in the story and the characters and I just wasn't in this book.

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Tricia is visiting Cordillera, a tiny kingdom located between Spain and France where her parents are doing missionary work. She intends to watch over her younger sisters while her parents are at a conference for two weeks and is briefly mistaken for the Crown Prince's cousin, who had disappeared. She agrees to take the princess's place at public functions in order to help the royal family avoid scandal while they search for her. In the meantime, she gets close to the Prince and tries to fight their growing attraction.

Romance novels often rely on tropes, and the lookalike impostor that helps solve the mystery and falls in love with the hero(ine) is a favorite trope. The novel begins with this, and the setup is done beautifully. It just gets a little repetitive and runs down after a while, because there's nothing new and no additional obstacles for our hero and heroine to overcome.

The advance copy had a lot of quotation errors (action breaks in the middle of a statement meant that the quotes weren't picked back up for the rest of it) that I hope are fixed in the final copy.

The prince didn't impress me very much, and not just because he's a product of his country's culture. I didn't find him particularly charming or noteworthy. Tricia liked some aspects of his character, but he steamrolled over some of her objections or outright dismissed them, which never appeals to me. The expected happily ever after ending was abrupt and a complete turnaround from the royalty/commoner conflict throughout the book that it felt very contrived. For such a promising beginning, I was disappointed by the ending of the book.

Patricia/ Tricia was at the opera house in the small country of Cordillera. Someone touched her arm and called her Alyssa and she found out it was prince Lawrence thinking she was his cousin Alyssa. Then Tricia apologized and said she was not Alyssa. Tricia taught at the university . Lawrence’s father had die d when he was a child so Lawrence’s uncle was king but someday Lawrence would be. Tricia thought Prince Lawrence was too sexy for his own good. Tricia was in charge of her two younger sisters- Cindy- who was and Becky who was fourteen- while her parents were away. Then one of the Prince’s aides came and told Tricia the Prince has offered her and her sisters a ride to their home with him. Tricia was a graduate student at the University Of Texas and taught there while she worked on her on her doctorate . she had come to Cordelia to visit her family. Her parents were missionaries. The Prince told Tricia she fascinated him. The Prince came the next day to invite Tricia and her sisters to tea and the girls wanted to see the palace. Then the Prince asked Tricia would she pose as his cousin and help entertain a visiting ambassador the next night. Then it turned out as the Prince explained to Tricia that his cousin Alyssa had disappeared and they didn’t know why. She was asked by the King to keep this information to herself Then the prince also said he would have a trusted staff member teach her how to be around royalty as they wanted Tricia to pretend to be Alyssa. Prince Lawrence came to Tricia to tell her about the man who was stalking his cousin. Tricia was to claim to have laryngitis so she didn’t have to speak much so her accent wouldn’t be a problem. Tricia was attracted to the prince but knew to pull herself back as this would never be allowed as he was a royal and future king.
I really couldn’t get into this story.I understood why they wanted Tricia to act as Princess Alyssa but it just wouldn’t work as far as I am concerned. Also it was still lying and lies usually come back to bite you in the butt. But then again I don't know a whole lot about politics especially involving royals but this didn’t keep my attention and I didn’t enjoy it that much. I am sure there are a lot people who really will enjoy this story just wasn’t for me.

I received this book from Netgalley to review and sincerely expected more from history,
As it gives the impression that it is a book with suspense about the disappearance of the princess of the kingdom of Cordillera and a whole plot of betrayal and espionage behind the fight for love. But it was not what I found.
I have already found it strange that the protagonist Tricia wants to pass the image of an independent and emancipated woman, but always gives in to the will of the prince who is somewhat arrogant and only do what he wants. Since the beginning of the book he has been a great supporter of the conventions and laws of his country, and even with the attraction he feels for the young Tricia, he makes it clear that he can not marry her. She spends all her time thinking about this detail but always shows herself vulnerable and confused about what the prince thinks.
The book shows some prejudices, i didn' t agree with .
Particularly I did not like the plot and even tried to interest myself in the love story but I arrived at the end disappointed. I really expected something more excited and lovely.

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 trousers in public’ and another 'forbidding married women with able-bodied husbands to work outside the home’.

I’m thinking that the author hasn’t heard of the EU. For a bit I wondered if I’d misinterpreted something and whether the book was actually set in the 1950’s or something, but no. Cellphones are a thing. This is supposed to be contemporary. Despite someone apparently thinking that the only way to get from England to the South of France is a ferry or train via the Channel Tunnel. Apparently the author hasn’t heard of aeroplanes either.

Western Europe… ANYWHERE in Europe… is definitely not the right location if you want archaic, outdated, misogynistic laws to apply. The Middle East or North Africa, maybe. Maybe this is supposed to be a Sheikh romance and the author is just geographically confused.

The heroine’s parents are Christian missionaries, away in South Africa at the time of the story (where she worries about them getting caught up in a tribal uprising, which is yet another impossibly geographically ignorant plot point) and therefore her reaction to Prince Lawrence wanting to have an affair with her is quite understandable. I’d have slapped the offensive asshat’s face as well.

Look… there is a trope in romances that has been around since Jane Austen’s time at least. Pride and Prejudice is THE classic example. The hero of the novel acts like a misogynistic asshat and eventually, by the power of falling in love with an Opinionated Strong Female, finds redemption and does the biggest grovel ever. That’s the payoff for having to put up with the hero being an asshat for most of the book.

By the time I got halfway through this book, I was already thinking that the grovel had better be particularly epic.

But here’s the thing. THERE IS NO GROVEL. Lawrence never changes his opinions. The closest he ever gets is being willing to POSSIBLY give up his future crown for lurve - in order to marry Tricia, that is, since she’s a Commoner. Since there aren’t really any other actual candidates for the crown anyway, this is pretty much a win-win bet for him.

Some of the lines in this book are so awful that I can only reproduce them here and let you judge them for yourself.

“Princesses are supposed to be virgins and wear white for purity when they marry.”
Oh, you did not just say that after telling Tricia that you’d set her up in a nice apartment in the city, YOU MASSIVE HYPOCRITE.

Did she expect a marriage proposal before she’d go to bed with him? She was enchanting, but he needed a dutiful compliant queen like his aunt. And Tricia wouldn’t live compliantly under Cordillera’s laws. She’d agitate for more privileges for women.
WELL GOOD FOR HER, said I.

Lawrence believed men better fulfilled their traditional roles as bread winners and leaders. Women should be the nurturers and lovers they were meant to be, although he supposed they could handle motherhood and part time jobs.
HOW MIGHTY BIG OF HIM. Women can 'handle’ motherhood??? WHO ELSE DOES HE THINK IS GOING TO DO IT???

And then… and then, somehow, it got worse. Lawrence and Tricia are talking about the missing princess Tricia is substituting for, who may have run off with her college professor - they suspect she’s pregnant - and this GEM comes out.
“We can’t allow that. She’ll have to have an abortion under strict secrecy.”

Yes. You read that right. He said that 'we’ (as in the royal we) would FORCE a woman (a princess no less) to HAVE AN ABORTION because she is having a child OUT OF WEDLOCK.

This was the point at which I threw up a little bit in my mouth.

Honestly, from this point on I was skim-reading because I just wanted to read the epic grovel (which never happened). There was a sex scene at 95% of the way through the book at which Lawrence finally seduced Tricia and they had sex in a pool. After that they go back to his room and he produces a bunch of condoms, at which point Tricia realizes that they didn’t use protection before, and I swear to God I’m not making this up, thinks
Hopefully the flowing waters took care of that worry.

Well, it might be how the Force works, but it’s sure as shit not how birth control works, honey.

This book is an absolute hot mess. It’s poorly researched with an utterly nonsensical plot and the most dislikable hero I’ve read since Christian Grey. I absolutely hated it. One star.

This was a hard book to review. It felt like the author was at times writing a sample outline but then it would turn into writing that was engrossing. It bounced back and forth in this vein until the end. I will go three stars for while not totally believable it was overall an interesting plot line and read. I was given this book in return for an honest review. Anna

DNF. The cover has an amateurish feeling to it and the writing matches, if this was fanfiction I would understand. The plot is fairly ridiculous and there are no European Kingdom's that are that backward. I know the author is probably trying to make the MC seem to be some big feminist, but the laws she's using are ridiculous.