3.5 stars
This was my first Karina Halle book and I enjoyed it. I thought it was a cute enemies to lovers/second chance story. It has a dual timeline (now and 2 years ago) and while they are not my favorite, I thought in this case it helped me stay hooked a little bit more because I really wanted to know what happened before that brought our MCs to the point they were today. It was a good story, lighter than what I've been reading so it was a nice change of pace however it did not excite me. I had a hard time really buying/believing/feeling the back story of both MCs and I think that's what made me not as invested. Overall I thought it was a good book, a good palate cleanser if you need something to switch it up.

Out On: September 10, 2024

I didn't expect to enjoy this book as much as I loved The Royals Next Door but I will say I really did have a fun time with this one! I thought that the setting was amazing, it made me want to travel again SO badly! The author did an amazing job of painting a picture of everywhere that our characters went throughout Norway. You could actively picture it in your mind which I was OBSESSED with!

James and Laila were two characters that took awhile to grow on me. I warmed up quite a bit quicker to Laila, but it didn't take long for me to love them both and want them to just smarten up and be together and happy! Watching them learn to trust each other and grow in their understanding of what love could look like was really heartwarming and made me absolutely RIP through this book to see what the outcome was going to be!

I highly recommend this book if you want a romance with some emotional growth to it!

If you don't like to read spicy scenes in books (like myself) then I recommend you skip/skim the following chapters:

🌶️ Closed Door Modifications: Chapters 9, 10, 12, 16, 17 & 20

Thank you so much to Berkley Publishing Group for this advanced copy on NetGalley! 🤍

2.5 rounded up

I usually really like Karina Halle’s books but this sadly didn’t really work for me.

I think this might have worked better if it was 200 pages at most. There’s somewhat of a plot but it feels barely there and the romance felt like it went from 0-100 without any real reason besides them having sex.

There’s a bit of a grief plot which I was interested in but that also felt like it came and went. Character development had potential but didn’t feel like it really went anywhere either.

I did enjoy certain scenes in the story and still enjoyed the writing style for the most part but overall the story was just a miss for me.

A royals-adjacent second chance romance seems like something I would totally eat up. And I mean, technically I did, but I did not have the best time.

Second chance romances are near and dear to me. I love the opportunity for groveling and pining. But this was entirely too insta-lust/lovey for me. Also tbh the mmc kinda gave me the ick. The two of them have basically no relationship development outside of the smut. Also, plot… uh, where was it?

For taking it for what it is (read: a smutty romance), it was fine. I read it fairly quickly and def liked it more than the first book.

Thank you to NetGalley and berkley romance for an arc!

4⭐️ I always love a royal romance, and while this isn’t a traditional royal Romance, it’s more of a people who work in a royal Palace falling in love romance, it still gave me all of the good feelings of a good romance! I was hooked from the moment that I started this book and I could not get enough of James and Laila! I think this will be a great book for peoples winter TBR, because it gives you that cute cozy, feeling of being trapped in the European mountains.

This book was a cute, sweet, heartwarming, second chance romancewith a lot of spice! This was my first Karina Halle book but definitely won’t be my last.

This was an advanced read copy I received through Netgalley so it’s not going to be officially published until September 10, 2024! But this is my honest review!

Add this book to your to read list, I promise you won’t regret it! & then let me know what you thought!

#books #bookstagram #booktok #bookrating #library #bookreview #bookrecommendations #bookrecs#bookcommunity #booklovers #booksofinstagram #bookish #fivestarbooks #romancebook #kindlebooks
#kindleunlimited

3.5 stars! This was a fun royal contemporary romance, and I absolutely love the bodyguard trope, especially when it's combined with a nanny trope.

I continue to adore Karina Halle's writing—I think this is the fifth book I've read by her! She really knows how to pace a book well. I especially loved the emphasis on Laila's hometown. It was clear that Todalen has a special place in the author's heart and her descriptions of the town made it seem so magical. I just loved the wintry aura of this book + the Norwegian palace setting.

Though I wasn't the biggest fan of the relationship development between James and Laila. They didn't seem to have enough tension or chemistry. I think the flashback scenes also could have been more emotional and romantic. I didn't get that warm, falling-in-love fuzzy feeling during those scenes. This was spicier than I expected, which is fine for me personally, though I wish some of those scenes were replaced with other relationship/character development scenes.

It is an interconnected standalone, and I haven't read the others that are related to this book. Though I'm definitely interested now in reading Magnus and Ella's book as well as Piper and Harrison's!

Thank you so much to Berkley Romance for sending me a copy of The Royals Upstairs. As always, my reviews are one hundred percent voluntary and all opinions are my own :)

Did not finish book. Stopped at 27%.

Book never drew me in and made me want to keep reading it. Did not feel like a standalone, as there were numerous references to The Royals Next Door and the Norwegian prince books.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the electronic advanced reader.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for sharing an ARC of this book with me in exchange for an honest review. Overall, I think this book was a miss for me. I didn’t connect with either character and as short as this book is, I think a lot of scenes could be cut. It all felt very disconnected and once the spice started, it felt like that was the only thing carrying the story from that point on. A lot of the scenes also felt redundant, especially during their second break up. I found the making up and James’s declaration of love to be way too quick and it came across as superficial. I was entertained by the book and never dreaded picking it up but overall the story line and characters were not for me.

Title: The Royals Upstairs
Author: Karina Halle
Publisher: Berkley
Reviewed By: Arlena Dean
Rating: Four
Review:
"The Royals Upstairs" by Karina Halle

My Perception:
'The Royals Upstairs' was a good read about the nanny [Laila Bruset, a Norwegian nanny] and the bodyguard [James Hunter, a Scottish bodyguard.] in Norway's royal estate. These two once had a relationship, but things didn't end well for them. Now, they have been thrown back together after some years apart. Will they get back together after admitting their true feelings to one another? It was a well-written read with complications, but seeing how they worked things out between the two by the end gave the read heartwarming in this second chance romance.


Thank you to the publisher, Berkley, and NetGalley, for the ARC!

👑 Book Review 👑

The Royals Upstairs by Karina Halle
👑
This book was a fast, fun read. I love a good second chance romance, especially when we get dual POV and dual timeline to learn where everything went wrong the first time, and to see how much the main characters are secretly pining for each other. This book had plenty of that! There was tension, angst, and chemistry, but it was also tender, sweet, and heartwarming. It was a cute read that made me smile, and I had a great time with it.
👑
My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Spice level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️
👑
Read if you like:
▫️second chance
▫️enemies to lovers
▫️forced proximity
▫️work romance
▫️bodyguard x nanny
▫️dual POV
▫️dual timeline
👑
Thank you to Berkley, NetGalley, and Karina Halle for the ARC. I received an advanced copy for free, and am leaving this review voluntarily.

Read if you like:
🥈 Second Chance Romances
🔀 Opposites Attract
🧠 ADHD Rep
👑 Royals
🇳🇴 Norway Settings

This book features the second chance romance between James Hunter a royal bodyguard and Laila the royal nanny to the Price of Norway who previously worked together with another royal family years prior and things got steamy and then fall off the cliff when Laila admits she is starting to fall for James and his past abandonment trauma rears its ugly head and he breaks her heart.

Now when they reconnect, they both have changed and grown some, but find themselves back in their old patterns of hooking up and denying their feelings all to rewrite their history again.

Thank you to Berkley for my ARC and to PRHA for my gifted audiobook in exchange for my review!

This quasi royal romance between the Nanny and the bodyguard was SPICY!! But I was totally here for that. I also enjoyed that it was a second chance, dual POV story with emotional depth and an interesting Norwegian setting. Good on audio and set in the same universe as the author's The royals next door. Recommended for fans of Jenny Holiday's Royals series. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy and @prhaudio for a complimentary ALC in exchange for my honest review!

A second chance romance between a bodyguard and a nanny for a royal family sounded like it would be right up my alley. I've read Halle before and enjoyed previous books. This one left me feeling a bit underwhelmed. If James was meant to come across as overly aggressive and pushy because he's a body guard, then he succeeded. I just didn't think some of the aggressiveness was needed, honestly. I wish Halle had provided more background and detail on James' history, and built a stronger connection between the two MCs. Laila was fine, as a heroine, but I we as the readers needed more time witnessing James and Lalla in love and enjoying their romantic experiences more than we did in order for it to be convincing. The steamy scenes were pretty well done, which is why I was able to round up to 3 stars. I would probably still read another Karina Halle book because I do enjoy her writing style, this one just didn't do it for me.

The Royals Upstairs includes:

- Found Family
- Second Chances
- Enemies to Lovers
- Scottish Bodyguard
- Steamy Chemistry
- Loveable Supporting Characters
- Emotional Storyline

James is a smokeshow Scotsman with a tough exterior that hides a broken psyche. He once found solace in a forbidden, no-strings-attached physical relationship with Laila, but once she shared her true feelings, James’s fears put distance between the two, breaking Laila’s heart. Now he’s stuck with her in the middle of the Norwegian countryside and with a new, boisterous royal family. Awkward, much?

Laila is a strong woman with a beautiful spirit and a unique individuality that I greatly admire. She is experiencing the world and figuring out life while taking care of her ailing grandmother. Laila had a great job as a nanny for British royalty. Then she meets a sexy Scottish bodyguard and burns up the sheets with him to curb her loneliness, finding comfort in his arms. When she blurts out that she’s falling for him, the bodyguard shuts the door on Laila and their steamy dalliance while crushing her in the process.

When her grandmother’s health takes a turn for the worst, Laila finds a job closer to home and far from the jerk who shunned her. Things are going well until one day she hears a familiar brogue, knocking her off her stride and pissing her off. How dare HE come here and mess up her life, again!

James and Laila are combustible together. Their physical chemistry is off the charts steamy and expressively detailed. But their emotional chemistry is beautifully broken, there is a painful fragility to it. It’s gonna take a lot more than James’s boyish smile and Scottish charms to fix things.

Laila’s relationship with her grandma is moving, heartfelt, and oh so relatable. I could feel the emotion coming off the pages and I could easily empathize with Laila. Their secondary story was beautifully done and left me a teary mess.

The Royals Upstairs made me smile, squeezed my heart, and filled me with joy. I laughed, loved, and wept right alongside these wonderfully crafted characters.

This was my first book by Karina Halle and it was an enjoyable reading experience.

This was super fun. I listened to the majority of Royals on audio and really liked the narration and the story that way. Both Laila and James had a tough history and a lot of stuff in their personal life. But their tension and connection was more than either could ignore. They had been in a secret relationship before and things went wrong. So this time their connection came with fear and hesitation. I loved the growth we saw in all of the characters. This series has a full cast of people that we love to know and it gave depth and life to this story

This one fell so flat for me. I love following the Norwegian Royal family, how fun! However every character just lacked depth and the story just felt so shallow.

This as a solid three star read for me. I really enjoyed the other book in this series and while there were aspects that I found entertaining, it wasn't my favorite Karina Halle novel. I wanted to know more, more quickly about their prior conflict and more, more quickly about the things that made them who they were. Those things were eventually revealed but I found myself distracted by wondering about those things rather than focused on what was happening right in front of me, on the page.

Overall a pleasant read.
I look forward to reading more of Karina Halle's novels as they come out.

This contemporary second-chance romance is well written but lacked the humor I was hoping for based on the cover. I didn’t connect emotionally to the characters or the story. DNF

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC.

I’m new to Karina Halle, so I wasn’t sure what I was getting into with this book, but it was a lot of fun!

Second chance romances are not always my jam. In fact, I really need to be sold on why they are going to work, and Karina did just that in this book. Everything was laid out and well explained to where things made sense. I adored Laila, she was such a great character. I mean what bookish introvert isn’t going to love her? Certainly not any I know! James was a little bit of a harder sell, he was a bit meh, but then he did come through and I found myself really liking him as well. The tension and angst between them was great and palatable. There ended up being so many heartwarming and tender moments throughout the book and their chemistry just shined through the pages.

This is a standalone book, however, I found myself wishing that I would have read the other two books, Nordic Royals and Royals Next Door just to have had some more time with the characters. I do think that Karina did a nice job laying out the characters and explaining them though, so I didn’t feel lost, which is always appreciated.

I really loved The Royals Next Door so I was highly anticipating this book.
Unfortunately it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. Second chance romance is not a favorite trope of mine. I’m not sure if it was the characters, their actions, or the royals, but the story line just didn’t work for me. It left me very underwhelmed.
2.5 stars
.
Thank you to netgalley and Berkley for the opportunity to read this book.