Battle Royal, the first in the Palace Insiders series, was my favorite romance of the entire year in 2021. Thus, I was highly anticipating Codename Charming.

And I think that, with some edits, it really could have been fantastic. Lucy Parker is undeniably talented. But as is, this was a fairly middle-of-the-road romance for me.

A few reasons why:
- Too many hijinks. They felt out of place for these characters/this story.
- Beauty and the beast AND giant man/tiny woman felt like too much - I think their pairing would have felt more natural just playing up one of those (especially when you've got strangers to friends to lovers and fake dating as well).
- The moment that really got at my heart just involved Pet, not Pet and Matthias. That to me made this one feel more like contemporary fiction than romance.

Of course, YMMV, and if any of those ^ sound attractive to you, you may very well love this one.

I'm going to be really honest the nickname Pet was really throwing me off, especially how she served others. It felt like a PG version of petplay. I don't think this book was for me.

A sweet grumpy-sunshine slow burn by Lucy Parker. Pet and Matthias are adorable together in this fake dating romance.

Battle Royal by Lucy Parker totally caught me by surprise and I absolutely loved every moment of the story that featured Pet. When I found out Parker was releasing a sequel focusing on Pet, I knew I had to convince the NetGalley Spirits to grant me access to the title!

Woot woot! Wishes come true and I was granted access to the title! Then, I did the worst thing possible, I dragged my feet to read the book. Why? Because I knew once I read it, I would have to wait far too long for another novel by Lucy Parker.

However, I don’t recommend waiting. I was all about Codename Charming! What a delightful read. The same humor, sizzle, and spice that was in Battle Royal was featured in Codename Charming. Pet was as endearing as always and downright graceful even when her employer manages to have gaffes left and right. Don’t even get me started on brooding and stoic Matthias. Oh my! He sounded alluring through the pages.

I’m also thoroughly obsessed with all things Royal so I was engrossed in all the elements royals based. There was even a bit of mystery in this installment in the Palace Insiders series!

Plain and simple, I loved it.

Thank you to Avon and Netgalley for a copy for review consideration.

Codename Charming is a fake romance between a bodyguard, Matthias Vaughn, and Pet De Vere, a personal assistant for Johnny Marchmont, a royal. If you read the first book in the Palace Insiders series, you'll remember Pet as she's the sister of the male protagonist. The story between Pet and Matthias actually started at the end of the previous book, but it's quickly recapped in Codename Charming. After a photo of Matthias and Pet is caught by the paparazzi, they come together in a fake relationship to help alleviate the pressure the press is putting on Johnny. If you've read a romance book before with a fake relationship trope, you know exactly what's going to happen.

I found Codename Charming to be slower to get into and it's a slow burn for the romance. If you're looking for spicy scenes, they don't come until close to the end and there aren't many. I enjoyed the friendship between Matthias and Pet that built the framework for their relationship. Also I want to participate in the wand game towards the end. Forget about paintball this is the game to play.

If you're a fan of royal romances definitely check out Codename Charming.

I really like this book and this series, and the stories continue to be funny and thoughtul and also dealw ith real serious likfe stuff instead of being only happy!

Codename Charming was super charming! I really enjoyed this book. It gave me a beauty and the beast vibes and I loved that

This book has a wonderful cast of lovable characters including our heroine, Petunia who the assistant to Johnny, a member of the role family, and the hero Matthias his Johnny’s bodyguard. Petunia gets wrapped up in a minor scandal that has a solution of Petunia and Matthias fake dating.

I loved watching how Petunia and Matthias’ relationship unfold and how the may not have appeared to be perfect to the world, they were perfect for each other and fit seamlessly together.

I absolutely recommend this book to anyone who loves cute romances or cute rom coms. This had a little bit of everything - fake dating, Royal smiley, found family, cute banter, slow burn, and a colorful and fun cast of characters.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and Lucy Parker for this advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

This was cute but too similar to the first one, grumpy sunshine and royal intrigue. The first one was great but this didn’t hit as well. Seemed to retry the same ground

This is the second book in the Palace Insiders series, but can be read as a standalone. It was a cute, quick read about the personal assistant to the accident-prone prince of England who fake dates the prince's bodyguard to quell false rumors.

This gave all the grumpy/sunshine, forced proximity, fake dating to real feelings vibes. I just wish we had more time with Pet and Matthias as a real couple. The overall premise was good, but the ending felt rushed.

Dominic's sister, Pet, is settling into her role as the personal assistant of Johnny Marchmont, but cant seem to crack Matthias, one of his royal bodyguards. The stoic man is more serious and strict than anyone she's met, but she's undeniably drawn to him.

When the palace suggests Pet and Matthias fake a relationship to take some heat from the press off Johnny, they reluctantly agree.

Overall, I didn't love this one quite as much as Battle Royal. The royal setting is fun and presents unique challenges in their relationship but I just wasn't as invested in their story.

Really really cute!

I’ve been looking forward to this book for so long and it certainly didn’t disappoint!! It was truly so fun to watch Pet and Matthias fall in love!

What you’ll find in this book:
-beauty and the beast vibes
-he falls first and harder
-royal security and a royal PA
-fake dating
-teddy bears, and buttons, and wood carvings, and glitter, and fairy lights..
-trapped in a room together
-steamy kisses and an open door romance (but not overly explicit)
-a bird shenanigans
-paparazzi stalkings and drama!
-family drama

I adored it! Such a great follow up to Battle Royal!

I've tried a couple times and I can't get into this one. DNF for now, for sure, thanks for the copy!

I loved Battle Royale, but Codename Charming was QUITE as good for me. I loved the grumpy/sunshine trope, and the characters. The only reason I took a star was because it was too slow burn for me.

One Sentence Summary: As the new personal assistant to the British royal family’s newest member, a disaster of a prince, Pet finds herself not just helping him find his feet, but also in a fake relationship with bodyguard Matthias to protect the newlyweds’ marriage, but is it really fake?

Codename Charming is something of a sequel to Battle Royal. Set some time after the disastrous ending scene of Battle Royal, it sees Dominic’s younger sister Pet as one of the new prince’s newest team members. Surrounded by royals, who each sound a bit crazier than the one before, and very large bodyguards, one of whom blames himself for the awful knife injury Pet sustained in the previous book, Pet keeps her bright sparkle and finds her place both as friend and sister. This is really a lot of fun and very sweet, and I do love that it neatly circumvented the typical romance format with two characters who are a bit older, a bit more serious, and bit more inclined to stay true to what they actually want. Codename Charming offers a sweet romance between a very large man and a very small woman while also giving glimpses of characters we first met in Battle Royal, including Sylvie and Dominic.

I adored Pet in the previous book. She carries a lot of emotional scars from being the child of an affair, but she didn’t let that stop her from being warm and bright and just so full of love and wanting to make friends. As the new personal assistant to a new prince, she deals with quite a lot, and often finds herself being accidentally tumbled into Matthias, the very large and not at all handsome bodyguard who does everything in his power to hold himself back from this bright spark he doesn’t feel worthy of. But that doesn’t stop Pet from trying, nor from tumbling head over heels for him, literally and figuratively, so it’s quite easy for her to fall into a fake relationship with him just to get the press to back off from affair rumors between her and the prince.

I loved Matthias, but hated the way the world chose to view him. He’s professional down to the very last bone, except when he slips up when it comes to Pet. He, too, carries a lot of emotional scars, including being orphaned and put through the foster system. He did manage to cobble together a loose family for himself, but a single tragedy made him withdraw, turning him into a glacier of a man with just a cat for company, but I did love his cat.There’s quite a lot of chatter, and really it is quite a lot, about how very large and how very much his face is not at all handsome. It actually became very annoying, as well as the constant comparison of how petite Pet is and how very large he is. I quite understood how defensive Pet got about it all, but it also started to come across as a little too much, and I started to feel like all the drama over their relationship was just based on how physically mismatched they were. But Matthias really was very lovely, incredibly protective, perfectly professional, and willing to do anything at all for Pet. I loved just how deep his love ran, and not just for her, but for Princess Rose and her disastrous commoner husband Johnny.

The romance between them was very sweet, when the reader wasn’t constantly reminded of all the physical differences between Pet and Matthias. They were clearly made for each other, and, in their own ways, clung to it. I loved that their love story actually started at the end of Battle Royal, and it just strengthened through everything they went through together in Codename Charming. I liked the way they worked well together both professionally and personally, and it was just so sweet how Matthias was always there to help Pet get Johnny out of some trouble. It was so much fun to get a look at this royal family from their perspectives, because they and all the fascinating royal things going on behind the walls was just a lot of fun and kind of wacky. Rose and Johnny were just so lovely and I liked that their team just felt like a big family.

Then there’s the side plot of Pet and her parentage. She unexpectedly comes into a bit of information that might lead her to her father, and I loved how torn she was about it, both wanting to discover this mysterious man, but also feeling hurt that he never tried to rescue her from her mother and stepfather. I liked that it never overpowered the rest of the story and was just there as an undercurrent, something for Pet to pursue in her off time. I really liked this story and the whole mystery of it.

It was fantastic to see characters from Battle Royal, namely Sylvie and Dominic and Sylvie’s bakery team. I loved getting to spend more time at Sugar Fair, and the staff was just as much fun. I do wish the love triangle from the previous book hadn’t carried over, but I found myself enjoying Mabel far too much to care as much as I could have. Then there’s Sylvie and Dominic, and I was disappointed I didn’t like them as much as I had hoped to. I love Sylvie and she was definitely a lot of fun, but the romance between her and Dominic just felt kind of mechanical. The brother-sister relationship between Pet and Dominic, though, was very sweet, and I loved how he was just there for her for whatever she needed.

Codename Charming definitely charmed me. Pet and Matthias were adorable and some of the things they got themselves mixed up in, no thanks to their boss, was just so much fun. I adore this royal family and just how wacky some of them are. It was fun to get to know all of them, and it just felt like falling back into a big, warm family whenever I picked this book up. There were a few things I wasn’t a huge fan of, but I found it was fairly easy to skip over them; they just got a little annoying with how often it came up. Overall, though, I really enjoyed this one and it was great to read more about Pet.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

I really enjoyed Battle Royale and was excited for more.. While I love Pet and the Beauty & the Beast retelling, this felt really long and normally I fly through romance books. It’s still enjoyable but it wasn’t the “couldn’t put it down” I was hoping for.

Pet (Petunia) crosses paths with Matthias due to their jobs as staff to an incident-prone royal. After another potential disaster caused by Johnny, Pet and Matthias end up fake-dating to stop the gossip. Their interactions while their chemistry developed were great to read. The are plenty of laughs to be had (the parrot scene in particular) and overall was a quick read.
Code name Charming is a fun grumpy/sunshine read. I received this book from the publisher as an ARC. This book can be read as a stand alone, as I did, but it is the second in a series and I will certainly be reading the first.

Petunia ("Pet") and Matthias are part of the royal detail. When the media starts the rumor of Pet being involved with princess's husband, a fauxmance plan is being put in place at the palace between Pet and Matthias to draw attention away.

Pet and Matthias are an odd couple, by appearance. She is petite and he has quite an imposing stature. But this giant of a man has a heart of gold. And naturally sparks will fly between Matthias and Pet.

There is so much to like about this book! The trope (fake dating and workplace romance), the setting (royal palace). I really enjoyed how this romcom alternates fun romantic parts with serious ones. There is troubled past in both MC's lives: relationship heartbreak, loss of loved ones. I adored the lyrical writing style and how hilarious and witty this book was. It's a modern story of Beauty and the Beast and of Gentle giant. I truly fell in love with the characters! This novel also has an interesting mystery subplot.

This book is not just for romance lovers, but anyone who enjoys a tender love story (with the hint of mystery) between the characters with a broken past.

Unfortunately, this one didn't hit the mark for me. As someone who thoroughly enjoyed Battle Royal, diving into this story felt like entering an alternate universe. Despite the characters being familiar from the first book, they somehow felt out of sync here. The central pair lacked the spark that makes a romance sizzle. Perhaps the hero's straight-laced demeanor was taken a tad too far, causing a noticeable disconnect in their chemistry. His perspective showcases a character with depth and history, but in the heroine's perspective, he becomes an enigmatic wall, making their exchanges lose their allure. Even as their interactions eventually evolve into banter, it's regrettably not the kind that sparks fireworks.

The hero's unconventional attractiveness could have been a unique angle, but its execution didn't quite find its groove. The pacing of the story seemed to stretch to eternity, and attempts at humor (like the escapade with the raucous parrot) fell oddly flat and failed to lend purpose to the narrative. All in all, this sequel left me longing for the charm and magnetism that initially drew me into the series.

I liked this book. It wasn't as strong as "Battle Royal," but it was cute. You can read the book description for a plot summary. :)

What I liked: Getting to see return characters. The goofy moments. The male lead is non-conventionally attractive.

What I didn't like: Pet peeve, so this may not bother other readers, but I'm tired of the "strong silent" type. A guy who doesn't talk is not attractive. I could easily get on a soap box about this, so that is all I will say.

The book was well-written, the characters are well-developed. The characters are balancing grief, trauma, and childhood neglect, and these subjects are handled delicately, neither too heavy handed nor too breezily. Recommended for those who like a bit of a slow-burn, steamy romance, those who like goofy/cheesy moments, and those who liked Battle Royal and want to return.

Be still my heart. Lucy Parker has done it again. Codename Charming is a new favorite romance. Petunia De Vere and Matthias Vaughn couldn't be more opposite to the casual observer. Physically, he's a giant, and she's a petite little flower. He's grumpy. She's sunshine incarnate. He's a bodyguard. She's a personal assistant. The one thing they know they have in common? A desire to protect their royal employers. Which is how they get sucked into a fake-dating scheme to distract the tabloids.

This book sucked me in from the very first chapter. I actually made myself read it slowly because I knew I would be sad when it was over. I loved how Pet and Matthias had a deep connection from the very beginning They just had to get out of their own way long enough to believe their connection was real. Despite their outward differences, Parker slowly revealed just how much the two of them had in common where it matters. And they both have enormous hearts and the capacity to love deeply and completely.

I loved it so much, and I'm so glad the publisher sent me a finished copy to slide onto my shelf next to Battle Royal. These two books are bound to be rereads for me--the romance is top notch, and the characters are *chefs kiss* perfectly imperfect.