Highlights:
Grumpy/sunshine
Royal bodyguard/Royal PA
Fake relationship
Beauty and the Beast vibes
TW for grief, PTSD, and child neglect

Battle Royal was one of my favorite romances last year, and Codename Charming was one of my most anticipated books. It is a romance between Matthias, a grumpy Royal Bodyguard, and Petunia, a sunny Royal PA. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Matthias and Pet have great chemistry, and I loved their slow-burn sweet romance. Several amusing secondary characters provide great comic relief. And I loved revisiting characters from the previous book, especially Sylvie and Dominic, who remain my favorite.

I have rated this book 3.5 stars.

This book contains some of my favorite tropes: bodyguard, fake dating, & work place romance. I ended up finishing the story within two days. I enjoyed the characters and all of the cute scenes they had together. It made me smile and laugh at some of the situations they got into. Also, I like the connection that they had and they became very protective of each other. It was easy to see why they should be together and how much they cared for one another. Favorite thing about this book is how cute the nickname Button is. I did tear up a little when we got a closer look into Matthias backstory. He is just a big teddybear that needs a hug.

What I think was missing :
-I feel like there were a lot of plots that were happening in the story. I wish we could have had a little more time to explore them.
-The ending did feel kind of rushed and anticlimactic. It needed to be a little more flushed out. I wished we could have seen more with the characters being in a 'real' relationship and not the fake one. I would have also liked to see more from them getting to know each others families.

I have really enjoyed other Lucy Parker books but this one just wasn’t for me. Right from the start it felt so forced and over the top I was pulled out of the story. I can understand Johnny being clumsy or accident prone but can’t understand how he bumps Pet hard enough to send her flying off the stage? And then to learn later in chapter one that it’s happened four times??

I tried to stick with it but unfortunately this one just wasn’t working for me and I decided to DNF. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the free book to review.

Just delightful!

I mean, a grumpy-sunshine/fake relationship/workplace romance already has so much going for it--but when it's also book 2 in the Palace Insiders series? You know it's going to be good!

Codename Charming absolutely did not disappoint. Pet and Matthias's story made me LOL as much as it had be swooning--who can resist a big, burly guy who ends up melting for the teeny little heroine? It's suuuuuper slooooow burn, though, because the denial is strong with these two (the fact that they *had* to be in a relationship for work purposes probably helped slow things down, because it gave them *reasons* to not explore their feelings too deeply), but I promise, it's worth the wait.

The reasons behind Pet and Matthias's being *required* to have a fake relationship for work seem a little iffy--does the palace have an HR department?--we get a further reason much later on. AND of course these two probably weren't going to manage it on their own without some major manipulation anyway, so...

Given where they work and for whom (the Princess's husband Johnny, who not only takes clumsy to a new level, but Matthias also muses at one point "made a bloody Care Bear look cynical and streetwise") there is plenty of fodder for the "com" part of this rom com. But there's a lot of drama here too--Matthias has a tragic backstory, and those who have read Battle Royal already know that Pet's family life wasn't the greatest either. (You can read this one without reading the first book, but why would you? Dominic and Sylvie's story is just as delightful.) It takes a lot for him to believe that he's even lovable in the first place, let alone that *Pet* would find him so, and Pet tried so hard to befriend Matthias when she started working at the palace (to no avail) that she doesn't believe he could possibly want anything real with her either.

Throw in a grumpy cat, a murder parrot, and some truly delightful secondary characters--most of whom are just as committed as the reader is to getting these two to their HEA--and you've got the makings for an absolutely charming story. Pun maybe intended ;)

Rating: 4 1/2 stars / A

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.

This book just didn't work for me. I really wanted it to though, because the concept sounded right up my alley. The romance was also fine. I do think the two main characters had chemistry together, and I liked that they also had a deeper emotional connection. However, I just think this book was so boring. The author just kept describing things a bit too much, and we went on quite a bit of side tangents. I also think the side storylines just were a whole lot of nothing, and also just eye rollingly stupid. Like yeah, I didn't see the twists coming but that's because it was stupid and made no sense. I also think the author kind of forced a lot of "cute" big moments between them, that just made it a bit unrealistic as well. I don't know. The vibes were off with this book for me. It's hard to explain because technically most of this is totally fine, it just didn't work for me. So yeah, I'm kind of dissapointed that this didn't end up working for me because it sounded so good.

Get ready for a budding romance set in Buckingham Palace. Lucy Parker's Codename Charming is a sweet second book in the Palace Insiders series.

Petunia De Vere is the personal assistant of the newest husband of the royal family. Matthias, ex-amry solder, is a stoic bodyguard who will forever be in her debt after saving his assignments life. When a questionable photo of the two get out in the tabloids, fake dating and hijinks ensue. As always Lucy brings readers into a cozy romance with a adorable duo and a supporting cast that makes your heart sing. I would recommend this one to anyone who enjoyed Penny Reid's Knitting in the City Series

This was my second Lucy Parker book, and I was not disappointed.

While this fake relationship story is the second book in the Palace Insiders series, there’s no need to read the first in the series, Battle Royal - although you’d seriously be missing out on an incredible enemies-to-lovers story.

Codename Charming was excellent for Petunia (Pet), the sister to Dominic from Battle Royal. I was so happy for her to have her own story and how it all panned out since she felt like a lost soul in Battle Royal. It felt like she found her footing in this book and quickly became a likable character.

Matthias was another likable character from the start. There was just something about him that made me feel like while he had a hard shell of an exterior, he was just a soft teddy bear inside. I also felt like I sided with Pet when people made snide comments about Matthias’ scars and their height differences.

Notable Mentions:
👑 A clumsy royal
🚪 Some rather interesting predicaments
😻 Another cat appearance (less feisty than the one in Battle Royal)
😂 So many humorous moments
🐭 Many more sweet moments

Codename Charming was a fantastic follow-up to Battle Royal, and I highly recommend this series.

Thank you Lucy Parker, Avon Books, and NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review this book!

Just the cutest sunshine/grump romcom (my two favorite pairings) you could ask for. I couldn't get into the bodyguard/Royal premise that much, but I loved the FMC and MMC so much I could look past it haha.

This story was told in third person dual point of view from Pet and Matthias. It’s the second book in the Palace Insiders series and while you could read it as a stand-alone, there are a lot of characters in common with both books and events that contribute to prior relationships. As a matter of fact, I might have benefitted from a reread before picking this one up because I was rather confused at a few points and that detracted from my enjoyment of this story. It also has inspiration from the Beauty and the Beast theme.

I usually love a book with the bodyguard or fake relationship tropes, and I thought I was going to love this right from the beginning, but then it just stalled. It had moments that I really enjoyed followed by being genuinely confounded. It may have been distraction on my part, but I felt lost in the first half of the book. I felt like I should know more about Pet’s background (or remember more from the previous book) than the information that was given to me in this book. I found Jonny’s incidents to be funny, but they didn’t string together the narrative in a cohesive way for me until the parrot incident. The open nature of Pet’s thought process and the closed nature of Matthias probably contributed to this feeling.

After the angry Scottish-accented parrot, I felt like the communication between Pet and Matthias picked up and my interest piqued. I thought they were both genuinely interesting characters with great backgrounds to explore and find common ground even though physically, they were so different. There were moments where they interacted with supporting characters and other incidents with Jonny that kept the momentum going, though I did have a hiccup during the Wand competition in trying to remember who one of the characters was after having only been mentioned twice in this book though now I remember they were prominent in the first book. I even cried at the resolution of Pet’s quest but wish that I had felt those emotions earlier in the book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Avon Books for a copy provided for an honest review.

The title of the book really fits - it's charming! I liked the forced relationship element, especially as it showed the observant nature of their friends helping them make the connection. There were some lovely poignant passages of Pet and Matthias's backstory that really helped round out their characters. The tender aspect of their relationship appealed to me, and I thought it helped keep the story from being cliche or two-dimensional. And thank you for the epilogue with the happy ending!!! I don't always need to see how things wrap up, but in this case with meeting her real father and later getting married, it was just the perfect way to wrap up the romance!

So why only 3 stars? Partly it's because I struggled with the pacing. Regardless of the author, I have a hard time reading a book where there's SO MUCH internal dialogue between actual spoken moments. I felt like I spent too much time inside their thoughts, when that information could have been conveyed more succinctly in other ways. Also, it got a bit redundant to hear just how stoic and scary and imposing Matthias was and Pet's continual internal thoughts on Matthias.

The story was more open-door romance than I anticipated, and there were some moments of sexual innuendo that seemed a bit surprising? But that could also be a me thing. I definitely felt the realness of their connection and developing relationship, which is what kept me coming back each day to read more!

Have you ever wanted to read a grumpy/sunshine fake-dating romance with a massive size difference, and <i>no</i> monster cock? <i>I’m side-eyeing you, Ali Hazelwood.</i>

Well, look no further!

<i>Codename Charming</i> is the second installment in the <i>Palace Insiders</i> series by Lucy Parker. It follows Pet De Vere, the sister of our beloved MMC from book one, and her leading man, Matthias Vaughn, who is the imposing royal bodyguard of Pet’s employers. As the two are pushed together by the princess in a scheme to fake date after a slanderous rumor emerges in the gutter press, they are thrust into the spotlight and into each other’s arms.

From a distance, this book was adorable. Pet is a sweet truckload of sunshine in the shape of a tiny woman and Matthias is her massive grumpy counterpart, masking his gooey, lovable center with a hard exterior.

But I just couldn’t love this sequel. I think my main issues boil down to two things: the grumpy/sunshine trope was already used, and done better in my opinion, in the first installment; and there was an underwhelming lack of romantic tension despite the fake dating setup.


<b>ISSUE ONE: TROPE EXHAUSTION AND DISAPPOINTMENT</b>

Book one of the <i>Palace Insiders</i> series follows the romance between resident bottle of sunshine, Sylvie Fairchild, and local grump, Dominic De Vere. While there is no fake dating, the two are an unlikely pair that ultimately find common ground in their mutual traumas and grief, revealing that they are more like twin flames than one might imagine at first glance.

Book two follows a similar setup. Pet De Vere is a delightful ray of sunshine and Matthias Vaughn is your typical grumpy, stoic man with a hidden mushy side. While I can always get on board with this kind of trope, it’s awfully jarring to see the same archetypes used back-to-back in the same series written by the same author. The similarities automatically lend themselves to comparison, and that was to the detriment of the couple in this title.

The reason Dom and Sylvie worked so well was because Parker’s fresh take on the grumpy/sunshine trope showed that two people dealing with the traumas of their childhoods can manifest their resilience in different attitudes and defense mechanisms. Ultimately, they are still one and the same: twin flames with emotional baggage that bridges any external gaps with a bond that runs deep.

Parker does this again in <i>Codename Charming</i>, except the same approach feels stale now. This trope and the way she writes it have been exhausted, which is why it just didn’t work for me to see it yet again. I’ve already read this book via its prequel, and the messages conveyed in how that trope was written by Parker were beautiful and heartfelt. If I want to read it again, I’ll pick up <i>Battle Royal</i>. I won’t turn to an inferior copy, which I’m disappointed to say that this constitutes.


<b>ISSUE TWO: A SMOOTH RIDE IS BORING…WHERE WAS THE TENSION?</b>

Picture this: We have a romance with a fake dating plot line and…no tension? It can’t be. Fake dating is a goldmine trope for unlimited oodles of romantic tension. They are quite literally falling for each other under a fake pretense, constantly questioning whether the other person could be feeling the same very real feelings they are experiencing, or if it’s only one-sided. Then comes the natural conclusion of the fake-dating scheme, where it has to be called off and the characters must grapple with the fall out of either playing it cool and making the other person think they don’t reciprocate the attachment, or making a final declaration that could end in rejection.

Like I said, it’s a goldmine for tension in a romantic setting. That is why it’s so universally beloved. I’ve never encountered a book that had fake dating, but not the tension—at least, not until now.

Parker immediately popped the tension balloon by making one fatal error: She had Pet tell Matthias that his attraction toward her is mutual very early on during the fake dating. Sure, no official declarations were made, but once this was done, I knew exactly how things would play out from there. And I was right: Pet and Matthias carried on, playing along with the fake dating in public with a wink and a nudge that it was just “for the cameras”, all the while they both know that their hot and heavy make out sessions are for themselves. Yawn.

The only moment of tension occurred when the fake dating ended and Pet had to make her declaration of love. However, this felt contrived. Why is she questioning his feelings when they both have already communicated that their very real emotions that emerged from a farce are mutual? It was too little, too late and seemed like a last ditch effort to force the tension back into the story in the eleventh hour.


<b>FINAL THOUGHTS</b>

The lack of tension and the trope exhaustion ultimately hampered my enjoyment of this romance.

I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by one thing, though. When Matthias’s ginormous stature kept getting emphasized, I was really worried he would have a gigantic monster cock to match, a la Ali Hazelwood’s mammoth brick-house male love interests and their respective matching peckers. Even hearing Pet’s inner monologue about how Matthias could be too huge for her compounded this. After all, Ali Hazelwood has written FMC after FMC who has stared at her empire-state-building-sized man’s exorbitant schlong with acute trepidation only to be quickly converted into the Colossol Johnson Fan Club™️.

I’m extremely proud to announce that no such conversion exists here. Matthias’s plonker is only slightly bigger than average. <i>Bless you, Lucy Parker.</i>


<b>Audiobook Rating:</b> Anne-Marie Piazza’s accent is pretty strong so I found myself struggling with her voice a bit. My normal speed for audiobooks ranges between 2-2.5x, but I had to listen to this one on 1.8x and found myself rewinding to understand some of the lines. If you’re not a fan of strong accents in audiobooks, I would pass on this one and read the physical book. If that doesn’t matter to you, I would say this was still a fun listen because Piazza’s line deliveries were decent.

🌶️ <b>Spice Rating:</b> 2/5 - one on-the-page l sex scene, without all the cringeworthy sexual lingo

<b>Overall Rating:</b> 3/5

<i>A big thank you to Netgalley and the publishers, Avon and Harper Voyager, for providing me with an advanced copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review!</i>

First off s/o to to netgalley for the arc!

I wanted to love this book so bad, but I could not get into it. The concept was so cute, but I lost interest at the 60% mark! If you love beauty and the beast retelling definitely add this book to your tbr! overall it was a cute read!

Lucy Parker does it again with the second book in her “Palace Insiders” series!

This charming book follows Petunia, the PA to a bumbling royal, and Matthias, the bodyguard. It’s the grumpy sunshine, fake dating, slooooow burn book of your dreams!

I love nothing more than a romance that gives us true depth of character, and this one did just that. By the end of the novel I truly felt like I knew these two. And was, of course, rooting for them.

The Codename Charming is a heartwarming book that serves lots of humour, swoon worthy romance and an entertaining plot line. If you enjoy grumpy meets sunshine, workplace romance, fake dating, and opposites attract; then this book definitely should be added to your list. It is jam-packed with enjoyable characters and warm fuzzies. Overall, I loved it

Will I ever not be a sucker for a grumpy-ish bodyguard with a huge soft spot for the sunshine-y heroine?
Absolutely not. I will eat it up every single time and this was no exception!

I feel like the term ‘romcom’ can be so overused when classifying romance novels but this book walked the line of funny and heartwarming so well. The romance between Pet and Matthias was beautifully done and there were scenes that were gripping in the best way but there were also some laugh out loud moments where I had to set the book down for a second. (Yes, I mean the parrot scene and the pay-off from it at the end.) It was balanced very well and neither genre negated the other.

I love the glimpses we get into the FMC and MMC’s pasts and the ‘why’ behind who they became. It was done well without seeming like Lucy Parker was giving the reader a roadmap; it felt very organic. Also, I loved the secondary characters and the support they provided to the plot and characters without feeling superfluous or unnecessary.

I love a slowburn but I feel like it was a bit too long; I wanted more of Pet and Matthias as an actual couple as opposed to a fake couple. Additionally, as much as I like a book with no third-act breakup, it felt like there was just something a little lacking at the end in regards to their relationship.

Overall, I enjoyed the story and the theme of finding and making your own family! I’d recommend giving it a read! ♥️

Will I ever not be a sucker for a grumpy-ish bodyguard with a huge soft spot for the sunshine-y heroine?
Absolutely not. I will eat it up every single time and this was no exception!

I feel like the term ‘romcom’ can be so overused when classifying romance novels but this book walked the line of funny and heartwarming so well. The romance between Pet and Matthias was beautifully done and there were scenes that were gripping in the best way but there were also some laugh out loud moments where I had to set the book down for a second. (Yes, I mean the parrot scene and the pay-off from it at the end.) It was balanced very well and neither genre negated the other.

I love the glimpses we get into the FMC and MMC’s pasts and the ‘why’ behind who they became. It was done well without seeming like Lucy Parker was giving the reader a roadmap; it felt very organic. Also, I loved the secondary characters and the support they provided to the plot and characters without feeling superfluous or unnecessary.

I love a slowburn but I feel like it was a bit too long; I wanted more of Pet and Matthias as an actual couple as opposed to a fake couple. Additionally, as much as I like a book with no third-act breakup, it felt like there was just something a little lacking at the end in regards to their relationship.

Overall, I enjoyed the story and the theme of finding and making your own family! I’d recommend giving it a read! ♥️

Thank you to NetGalley, Lucy Parker, and Avon Books for allowing me to review in advance copy in exchange for my honest review!

Goodness this book.

When I tell you that I had high expectations for this book, I am NOT kidding. Battle Royal is one of my absolute favorite romances - I have a ridiculous amount of highlights in it that I repeatedly go back to when I need a pick me up. I've been looking forward to Pet and Matthias' book since reading that epilogue and let me just say...this book blew my expectations out of the water.

A fake dating, almost bodyguard romance, this book is GIVING all the tropey goodness I want in a romance. I think I've seen this referred to as a beauty and the beast esque story and I sort of get it but also it is it's own beautiful and wonderful separate thing. Matthias is all grumpy stoic protective giant energy and Pet is giving sparkly eccentric kick ass energy and the two of them together are electric.

When I tell you no one writes casual intimacy the way Lucy Parker does. This book is a sloooowww burn but every slight touch between these two is CHARGED. And when they finally do get together? O...M...G. I'm not kidding when I said I was staring open mouthed during that scene in the cabin...

I adored this book - I can't wait to revisit all my highlights. I loved everything, the side characters, the tragic backstories, the ornery cats and all the little glimpses we get of Sylvie and Dominic's happily ever after.

I also balled my way through that entire epilogue so take from that what you will.

Five enthusiastic stars from me.

Thank you SO much to Avon and NetGalley for letting me read and rave about an early copy of this book.

I couldn’t think of a sweeter title as “charming” is what this book is all about. The second book in a duology with Battle Royal, Codename Charming is Pet (Dominic DeVere’s sister) and Matthias’s story. The set up could not be any better: thwart the paparazzi and news media from their (inaccurate) suspicion that Pet is having an affair with her VERY married boss and Royal, Johnny Marchmont, by having Pet enter into a fake-relationship with her PPO to the Royals coworker, Matthias. Pet and Matthias must put on a showmance for the cameras in order to distract the paparazzi, and as with any good fake relationship romance story, our hero and heroine start to blur the lines between what is fake and what is real once they’re forced to interact.
This is a slowburn of all slowburns as Matthias is reluctant to allow himself to open all the way up to Pet. He is a hulking giant of a man who is the very embodiment of an intimidating protection officer—he is stoic, quiet, and immovable and described as a beast of a man, yet none of this drives off Pet. She is the beauty to his beast, petite, beautiful and effervescent and yet she is the only one who really sees Matthias. There is so much sweetness and delicately intimate moments between these two, but really only one bedroom scene. If you love forced proximity, fake dating, and Grumpy/Sunshine then you will enjoy all the tender moments between Matthias and Pet. They’re easy to love and it’s fun to see how they slowly reveal themselves to one another.

Moments that stood out in Codename Charming:
-Matthias’s nickname for Pet (swoon!)
-The entire parrot nabbing, trapped in a room fiasco—this made me laugh so hard!
-Pet cutting silhouettes and Matthias whittling wood
-Rosie’s confession

I think I could’ve done with a reread of Battle Royal because there were a few side characters I had forgotten about (Jay and Mabel). I loved seeing Sylvie and Dominic again, just as much into each other as they were in the first book, but it felt like a long time since I had read their story. The only reason I wouldn’t give this five stars is because the slowburn takes a little too long and I would’ve loved to have a few more scenes with Pet and Matthias where they are an actual (not fake) couple. Codename Charming has some truly magical moments and I know I’ll continue to pick up Lucy Parker in the future. I received this ARC from the publisher.

Heat Factor: After several interrupted moments, they do finally get to bone in the woods

Character Chemistry: They are very in tune with each other

Plot: Fake dating for PR purposes

Overall: Lucy Parker is very good at the thing she does

Here we have a grumpy one and a sunshine one who are working together and are pushed into a fake relationship in order to manage the paparazzi. Readers of Lucy Parker might say, “Um. I’ve read that one before.” And, well, you wouldn’t be wrong, but you wouldn’t be right either. Parker does have a thing—the grumpy-sunshine courtship novel—but each one offers a slight variation.

In this case, Pet and Matthias are in the public eye not for themselves, but because they both work for Johnny Marchmont, recently married to one of the British royals. I think he’s a prince consort? I don’t know how titles work. Anyways, Pet is his PA; Matthias is the lead of his security team. So they show up in the background of many a press conference. Now, British tabloids being what they are (read: gross), there are rumors that Johnny is having an affair with Pet. Simultaneously, the Internet Youths are shipping Matthias and Pet. Obviously, the best way to drown out the tabloid nonsense is to really give the Internet Youths something to scream about. Enter Codename Charming, aka Pet and Matthias do a fake relationship for the media.

As you might expect, Matthias the bodyguard is the grump here. He’s big (like, really really big) and taciturn and very very serious about security. Pet is the sunshine. She’s petite and can’t sit still and sometimes want to break the rules so that Johnny can have a little bit of fun. It might seem like they are opposites—grump and sunshine, tall and smoll, rule-maker and rule-breaker—but beneath the surface, they share similar core values and experiences. They both have protective instincts about a mile high and serious childhood trauma.

I would say there’s a good bit of angst in this romance, as one would expect in any good fake relationship story. Here the angst is mostly frontloaded; Pet and Matthias worry about proper boundaries and what it means that their relationship has a timeline (which will be determined by their bosses). Once they start locking lips their chemistry is explosive enough that they don’t really fall down the rabbit hole of “but is this fake relationship that feels real actually real.” And they don’t just have physical chemistry. They are also just really in tune with each other, which Parker shows with small moments, such as them referencing books by the same (fictional) author. Or Pet covering mean Twitter comments about Matthias’s looks with her thumb so he won’t see them.

Codename Charming is perhaps less funny that some of Parker’s previous books. This is not necessarily a negative, but is worth noting given that it’s being touted as a “delicious romantic comedy,” per the blurb. The bit where they play glitter paintball is pretty entertaining (perfect moment to show off those protective instincts, natch), but I would call this book charming rather than comedic. These two lovebirds lean serious, so there’s not much banter here.

Look, Parker may have a standard thing she does in her romances—but she is very very good at it. This romance is solid.

A note about the epilogue:

I wish I had read this book before we recorded our last podcast about epilogues because this one’s a doozy. I’m not sure that it falls into the “absolutely memorable” category, but it sure is doing a lot of things. In fact, this epilogue has three parts, each of which serves a different epilogue function.

Epilogue Part 1: One day after the final chapter. Wraps up the secondary storyline about Pet’s family history. (Family history was a big part of Battle Royal, where there were dual mysteries—the royal one and the personal one—but the family mystery here is much smaller and more contained.)

Epilogue Part 2: Several months later. A window of domestic bliss as Matthias and Pet move in together. More importantly, a shared memory is unearthed which reinforces Matthias and Pet as perfect partners—perhaps even fated to be together.

Epilogue Part 3: More months later. Wedding! Woo! Let’s have a partay!

I voluntarily read and reviewed a complimentary copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. We disclose this in accordance with 16 CFR §255.

This review is also available at The Smut Report.

I enjoyed this story. Having not read the first book in the series I was confused at first by the characters, but once I understood who everyone was I enjoyed the story and how Matthias and Pet stand up for one another.

This author is quickly becoming one of my favorites. This book was everything I was hoping for in this follow up to Battle Royale (one of my favorites from last year) and I have been anxiously awaiting it since the moment I finished the first book.

This book is heartfelt with depth and humor balancing. Pet and Matthias were so well written with complex backstories and internal growth/conflict that you can't help but fall for both of them too. The emotional connection that we see develop is beautiful to read and completely different than the first book. I was worried since it was another grumpy sunshine this would be a case of same book, different font, but this book takes the tropes in completely new directions and each book is wonderfully unique.

I enjoyed seeing all the side characters again as well as many new ones (the shit talking parrot being a personal favorite), and I can't wait for more books in this series.