Kira is the Princess Royal and the heir to the throne, and she is chafing under her stepmother's thumb while awaiting to ascend to power. In the meantime, she uses a magic cloak to pretend to be the legendary Beast of Barlow and roam the kingdom as a quasi-highwayman for her own amusement (and revenge too). Her childhood friend Robert is a knight, too handsome for his own good, but also kind and generous. Strange events start happening in a nearby kingdom with orphans turning into tiny version of the Beast when they leave the orphanage. Kira and Robert investigate this mystery as events unfold to bring them closer together. This new-adult romantasy is low steam but has lots of heart. Plenty of royal intrigue and magical happenings, with multiple plot lines to follow and a large cast of supporting characters. There's a nice thread of humor throughout as we learn more about Kira and her struggles as the Princess Royal, and her relationships with her stepmother and Robert. There are multiple 3rd-person POVs, which was a bit much at first but given how many supporting characters there are it really helped to tie everyone together (and set the stage for the next book in the series). Although there were a few pacing issues, the story picks up speed after the first third of the book and there was plenty of engagement through to the end of the story. This is a new-to-me author and I would definitely read her again, and I'm looking forward to the next installment in the series. Thank you to NetGalley for providing an eARC of this story, this was my objective review.

I read the blurb before reading the book and I instantly thought “ this is the book for me” and it truly was ! I am looking forward to reading more by this author in the future !

Thank you to NetGalley for giving this ARC, and this doesn’t influence my review. The tropes really got me interested in this book, but there were multiple POVs that confused me DNF

3 stars rounded up. This left me feeling kind of lost and not fully satisfied. The execution wasn't great, and there are many things that feel unfinished. There were side characters that I feel could've just been left out because of what little importance they have in the book. Based on the ending, I feel as though there will probably be a second book that has some of these side characters as main ones, but I'm not sure I'd be interested in reading it. Thank you Netgalley for the ARC.

This is an out of the ordinary book choice for me. I decided to try something different and enter into the fantasy world! I really enjoyed it from beginning to end, it kept my interest, curiosity and hopefulness about certain circumstances coming together! I don’t want to give anything away. Keep the series going, Melissa! Would highly recommend, thank you!

I had so much reading this to be honest, Kira was just an amazing character and a very strong female with a very unique secret which made thee book even funnier, gave me the Brave vibe specially with the kids and why they are little beasts..
It was a light and fun read for me but some parts I felt she was a bit immature since she's the princess of a kingdom but made sense because she's still a girl

At the start, there isn't a whole lot happening to drag you in. It starts off pretty slow, with main character Kira, the princess of the Kingdom, turning into a beast to rob and terrorize people that go through the woods, one of those people being Robert, who she soon has to work with to find out why the kids at the orphanage are turning into the beast.

I was not a fan of Kira as a main character. She just seemed really rude, immature, and unlikeable and she had constant beef with her stepmother, which is explained in more detail later on, but way too far in the book, in my opinion. I wish we had more information on this earlier on, because maybe then she wouldn't have annoyed me as much. She does get better as the book goes on, especially once we get that explanation, but she definitely acts like a princess, and not the good kind. I mean, she claims to want to take over the throne from her step mother, who seems that she would be a way better ruler by anyone's standards, but doesn't act in any way that would show that she deserves it. Robert was a breath of fresh air, and was way better than Kira in all senses of that. Robert and Kira were complete opposites, but he deserved better.

There was even a love triangle, if you can call it that, between Kira, Robert, and Robert's childhood best friend. However, if this was meant to be a major plot point, it needed a lot more than it got and it was placed on the back burner and at times, I found myself wishing that Robert ended up with his best friend instead.

Thank you to Sun Valley Books, Melissa Constantine, and NetGalley for the eARC of this book. This is my honest review.

I feel guilty but I DNF'ed this about halfway through.

I fully expected this to be a light, easy, surface-level read with an interesting concept. I mean, I certainly have not heard of any story about the MC wearing a beast cloak and terrorizing people?? That's hilarious. Why does she even do it?

The writing did make me laugh from time to time, but as one other reviewer said I had a little bit of a tough time keeping track of the characters, which made it hard to follow the story. To be totally fair that's not super unusual for me, but I think they were just all introduced in the very beginning in too quick of a succession for me to differentiate them all. They also didn't necessarily have unique traits for me to remember to help keep track.

Something about the MC kind of irked me too. I think it is quite difficult to write about a princess who doesn't care about her role in a way that makes her lovable rather than spoiled. I mean, she clearly didn't respect the expectations set of her by showing up late, running around in the woods, etc. but then had the audacity to be irritated when her stepmother is referred to as Queen rather than Queen Regent? It's just odd. But seriously, literally why is she dressing up as a beast and terrorizing people? I don't really understand why she would do that (despite how funny it is). It is probably mentioned later in the book than I reached, but I needed an explanation sooner.

This story was very unique! I have not read anything else like this & it was quite refreshing.
It’s also nice not to have so many triggers/ trigger warnings! I like a dark read and I think in a way trigger warnings can kind of intrigue you to read more and see how dark something really is? But this had such a good unique story line & not one trigger warning that I could think of at the top of my head apart from a family death that they talk about in past tense.

The humour had me literally LOL.
I did find it a little hard to keep up with the characters as they all more or less get introduced at the beginning and you have to try and follow along but that could just be my downfall to be honest.
It did confuse me slightly but again, this could be down to me! But everything made sense in the end if you kept following right through ( worth it, keep going…).

Robert & Kira live in my mind & I can’t wait to follow the rest of the series! Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read this incredible arc 💗

Curtsies and Consequences by Melissa Constantine is a hilarious no-spice regency fantasy romance, à la My Lady Jane.

Meet Kira, the future queen of the Known Kingdoms, as she will tell you one hundred times in this book. But for now, her crown is held by her stepmother, which she deeply resents. So to take her revenge, she robs the Lords of the country by being the Beast of Barlow, a mythical creature, using an enchanted fur pelt. But one day, she meets the knight Robbie, and the magic starts running havoc. The pair has to solve a mystery raised by Kira’s cousin: kids from an orphanage suddenly became small versions of the Beast of Barlow… But this doesn’t have any link with Kira, does it?

I absolutely loved this story! It was original and a breath of fresh air from all the regency or contemporary romances I usually read. And did I say it was hilarious? The humor went from sharp and witty banter to comical situations, and I found myself laughing out loud at times.

The narration has multiple POV, between the two MCs and their friends, which is a bit weird at first, but I quickly realized that there’s not just one love story, but three!

The characters were so damn-well written, I actually regret not to have a bit more to read on them. I would have loved a bit more insight on all the characters, because the comical of the situations removed a bit of the dramatics. One example: when Kira and Robbie find themselves again at one point, the focus is not on them but on magical objects that appear out of thin air.

I have to admit I did not like Kira at first: I found her obnoxious and rude to her stepmother, but as I delved into the story, she really grew out on me - especially when I learned why she hates her Stepmother so much. You know when you read something and you have to go back to a sentence at the beginning of the book and you realize you completely misunderstood it. Yeah. Like that.

The world-building was deep and novel, and I wished it was more introduced at the beginning of the book. I felt a bit of frustration at knowing new things about the world at the very end of the book - how could I have guessed what the mystery of the book was without knowing anything about the world I’m reading about?

That being said, it was a very, very good story that went way deeper than I expected, and it will probably stay with me for a while.

*Small note* I had the pleasure of reading this as an ARC, but there were a lot of missed words or errors in construction of sentences, especially at the end. I hope this is resolved when the book is out.

Okay, so, Curties & Consequences... I'm feeling a bit conflicted about this one.

I liked the idea of a story set in a world with magic, fairies, and court intrigue. And the forced proximity trope is always fun! But honestly, the first 20% was really slow.

The FMC, Kira, was a bit of a brat at times, which made it hard to root for her. But thankfully, she does get a character arc that redeemed her a little.

I think this book might be better suited for YA readers than New Adult. It felt a bit too young for me.

Overall, it's not a bad read, but it's definitely not my favorite.

This story is so good and so cute! Omg!!! I loved to read this book. I recommend everyone to read this book as fast as they can because it's really good and the characters are fantastic.

This was such a fun read. Enjoyed it immensely! The characters were likable and interesting. Hooked me from the beginning. Thank you for allowing me to read it early!

This book was very different than what I was expecting - not in a bad way, just a different way. For the most part, I enjoyed the story. It was fun, funny at times, and interesting, but something about the story seemed to jump around. I don't know if that's the right way to describe it, but when I think back to the storyline it seems disjointed. That's where it lost points for me. Characters were interesting, but sometimes their storylines were a part of the disjointed feeling. Maybe it was the writing style and I'm just not used to it. *Shrug*

I enjoyed Kira's character - pretty straight forward and you can empathize with her.
Robert - sweet character, but I wish we would have gotten to know him better.
Bertie - will be interesting to see where his story goes
Diana - seemed like a strong character and it will be interesting to see where her story goes
Xavier - petulant brat. Not really a fan
Caris - interesting character. I want her and her partner's story

In this twisted fairytale with ties to Beauty and the Beast, Princess Kira, of the Known Kingdoms has a secret, she has been using a magical cloak to transform into the infamous Beast of Barlow and terrorizing travelers. But when her cousin and dearest friend Bertie asks for her help in finding out what has caused a group of orphans to transform into beasts when they go outside, she is going to need help. Enter Sir Robert, aka Shiny Hair, the son of a duke and Kira’s secret crush (not that she would EVER admit that). She plans to let him help her but will keep her secrets and certainly will not fall for him.

I just could not get into this book, the blurb sounds amazing, and the idea of the book is fantastic, but I just didn’t enjoy the execution of the novel. Kira is hard to like, she is selfish, self-centered, bitter and rude. In addition to my dislike of the heroine, this book read like a YA novel and not a New Adult Romantasy. Also, this novel is in desperate need of editing/proofreading, there are a significant number of typos and numerous title errors (Note, this was a review copy and may (hopefully) be corrected prior to publication). In the end, I just didn’t care for this book, but I am sure there are plenty of readers, especially those who prefer YA novels, who would enjoy it.

*I am voluntarily leaving a review for an eARC that I requested and was provided to me by the publisher/author. All opinions in this review are my own. *

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ You Should Read “Curtsies & Consequences” by Melissa Constantine

If you like…
* Slow Burn
* Relatable Characters
* Magic & Fairies
* Laughing Out Loud
* Beauty & the Beast

HER:🩷
An angry princess pretending to be a beast

HIM:💙
A beautiful knight who is honor-bound to protect her

THEIR STORY:📖
Kira, Princess Royal of the Known Kingdoms, has a big, particularly hairy secret. That terrifying thing running through the woods around Corlea Palace? That’s her.

And she plans to keep it up, using the magic of an old cloak to be the mythical Beast of Barlow. It’s all going just fine until she receives an urgent request from her cousin Bertie to help him figure out why a group of orphans is turning into little copies of the Beast whenever they go outside. To help solve the mystery Kira is paired with Sir Robert, perhaps the most infuriatingly beautiful (and far too preceptive) knight on the continent, before a planned hunt for the Beast puts them in even more danger. All she has to do is keep her secrets close and Robert closer. Easy.

Until she wakes up as the Beast she’s been pretending to be.

Pre-order now (out 10/3/24):
https://amzn.to/4gsPj4t

If you like funny with your fantasy, you’re gonna love this!

Thank you to @sunvalleybooks and #NetGalley for letting me enjoy an advanced copy of Curtsies & Consequences.

❤️
♥️
♥️

#CurtsiesConsequences #newadult #romance #sciencefiction #fantasy #bookaddict #bookaddiction #bookreview #bookreviewer #newbookalert #newrelease #tbrlist #booktok #nextread #reading #readingtime #bookratings #readersgonnaread #readersofinstagram #readmorebooks #read #fantasybooks #romancebooks #scifibooks #fairies #magic #beautyandthebeast #slowburn #laughoutloud

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I really enjoyed Curtsies and Consequences. It's my favorite kind of world to escape into, a fairytale world with coziness and romance. In the same vein as Ireen Chau and Hanna Sandvig, two of my favorite authors. I just wanted to live in this world forever.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for an E-ARC.

Curtsies & consequences starts slow, but things quickly improve as you understand the main character more. I grew to like her a lot more than I expected to. My heart will always come around for an off-putting woman.
(Xavier though… kind of sucked. Even for a minor character. I’m not really one to mind when characters behave badly, but I felt like I was gonna go crazy seeing him described as an angel when all he really did was be rude and insensitive to his boyfriend. I would’ve taken all of their scenes and just gave them to Robert.)

<3 Robert!!! <3 Loved that sweet guy.

I’d best describe the world building as ‘Howl’s moving castle with Fairies.’ I really enjoyed these aspects and I’d like to read the sequel. Diana and Jordaan seem like a fun time.
This book was at its best when focused on the two main character’s and drawing on the fairytale similarities with the author’s unique twists. If ‘beauty & the beast, but the beast is a weird grumpy princess’ sounds appealing to you, check it out! 3.75 stars.

Thank you NetGalley and Sun Valley Books for the ARC.

This book is a mismatch of random fairy tale troupes and it is amazing: some Cinderella stepmother action, Beauty & the Beast (but the beauty is the beast) and some Sleeping Beauty action thrown in for good measure. I am so glad the about the author mentions that she is working on more books in this series because I would be devastated is there wasn’t more to read in this world she created.

“When she was queen, all dresses would have pockets”.

Princess Kira is my kind of future queen with rules such as all dresses having pockets and daily chocolate. As the book goes on you learn more of her past and how it has created who she is and why she acts the way she does the more you feel for her as a person. The handsome knight is the perfect love interest because they compliment each other so well.

It is a new adult romantasy and is exactly what you expect from that genre. It is written older than a YA but still has a bit of that growing up of the main character as part of the plot. I would say if you are a parent this would be safe for your older teen to read.

I generally avoid books that offer me a princess character, and at least when this book starts, Kira, the female lead, is an example of why I do that. She's petulant, rude, immature, entitled, and convinced that, despite all of this, she should have been allowed to accede to the throne in advance of her 21st birthday, rather than being placed under the regency of her stepmother (who everyone else sees as much more competent, with good reason).

Yes, there is a regency in this book, though it's not, as the form of the title suggests, a Regency book. The setting is a mostly generic fantasy world with a late-medieval feel, although also with some random anachronistic features like chocolate bars with gold-coloured foil, an icebox, and someone referred to as being "gun-shy," though we don't see any guns. We also get the word "Muppets" dropped at one point. Unfortunately, given the prevalence of aristocratic characters, the author makes some basic blunders in terminology, referring to the queen as "Her Highness" (the correct title being "Her Majesty") and sometimes having the male lead addressing the princess as "My Lady," inaccurately calling all nobles "royals" (only the monarch and their immediate family are royal), and referring to all noble territories as "kingdoms". Only a territory ruled by a king is a kingdom; one ruled by a prince is a principality, and one ruled by a duke is a duchy, so the so-called "Known Kingdoms" are, in fact, a single kingdom. She also (like a lot of fantasy authors) doesn't seem to know that a league is, by definition, the distance one can travel in an hour, so it's not possible for someone who started out maybe half an hour before you to be several leagues away, no matter how fast he rides.

Sadly, the ignorance doesn't stop there; there are also dozens of mechanical and vocabulary errors. Far too frequently, a sentence will make no grammatical sense at all, because there are whole phrases missing or a verb in completely the wrong tense, or maybe a word that's not even the right part of speech, or the wrong preposition, or a key word that appears to be chosen almost at random and have nothing to do with the intended meaning. For example, at one point a character is told "She has assured me you are quite revenant and I am not to fear from you." Apart from the odd phrasing "not to fear from you," "revenant" is a noun, not an adjective, and refers to a kind of undead creature, which doesn't fit the context whatsoever. Sometimes I can guess which word was intended, but sometimes, as with "revenant," I have no clue. Other random words along this line include "erstwhile" (which few authors use correctly), "fissure," "fop," "fallacy," and "inert," none of which strike me as particularly obscure vocabulary.

And apart from the random vocabulary words, there are a lot of homonym or near-homonym errors, some extremely basic: advanced/advance, definitive/definite, sensibility/good sense, jam/jamb, envelope/envelop, creek/creak, steal/steel, hoard/horde, wrap/rap, sight/site, hearty/hardy, stripped/striped, tact/tack, tuffs/tufts, reigned/reined (and reigns/reins), scrapped/scraped, manor/manner, led/lead (and not the verb, either, which is easily confused; it's the metal), who's/whose, proceed/precede, Robot/Robert, repelling/repealing, check/cheek, laying/lying, legions/leagues, everyone/every one, rammed/crammed, ring/wring, ascent/assent, mele/melee, ascended/descended, outrange/outrage, and it's/its. Some are clearly just typos, but if there is a way to misspell a word, this author will unerringly find it. It makes me wonder whether she mainly reads via audiobook (and never sees words spelled) and/or uses dictation software and doesn't know enough to clean up the homonyms afterwards.

I could go on and on about the many, many issues: the misplaced apostrophes when the noun is plural or a proper name ending in S (at one point, we get "Mrs. Banes's, "Mrs. Banes'" and "Mrs. Bane's" all within a couple of pages, of which either of the first two is justifiable - but it should be consistent - and the third is completely wrong), the missing past perfect, every kind of missing or misused punctuation, including mispunctuated dialog, frequently missing or misplaced commas, nearly every error it's possible to commit with a quotation mark, missing question marks when the sentence is a question and a question mark where the sentence isn't a question, capitals for terms of address that aren't titles and for the cardinal directions, and hyphens where they shouldn't be... it's a mess. Simply throwing it into Google Docs, by the way, would go a long way in finding issues like this. I marked about 400 issues, which compares poorly with the usual couple of dozen I find in an average book.

It's not just the editing, either. Plot points are dropped without notice (there's a promise of a noble title - incorrectly described, of course, as a "royal" title - that's never followed up on). There's a Convenient Eavesdrop, my absolute least favourite plot device, though it ends up not being that significant. "Oak seeds" (which the author doesn't seem to know are called acorns) are used in a metaphor that involves them circling in the breeze like dancers; that's not something acorns do. We never get an explanation of why the spell spread to the orphans specifically, or why Xav is Robert's best friend given that they come from widely separated places. Even though the chapters are headed with the name of the point of view character, in one chapter it hops back and forth several times.

But what about the characters? There's a gay couple - same-sex relationships are not an issue in this setting, and apparently political alliance is more important than succession - who we're told are happy together, but what we're shown is that one doesn't understand the other at all, and they're frequently fighting in an immature way; one is described as "kind," though I never saw him do anything kind, and several times saw him do something unkind. But they're not the main couple in the book. The main couple is the awful Princess Kira, whose only positive quality seems to be that she's beautiful, and the unfortunate Sir Robert, to whom I was metaphorically shouting, "Do not engage! I repeat, do not engage!" every time she came near him. I was actively rooting for his childhood friend, the third leg of the rather half-hearted love triangle, even though she had no particular qualities other than not being Kira, and even though I know the childhood friend always loses. Seriously, Kira is the worst. It's true that she had a loveless upbringing, and she is fairly nice to children, but... she's every negative thing I mean when I call someone a princess, and I was deeply sorry for Sir Robert, forced by the plot to be her partner against his better judgement.

A woman whose mother has been persistently not listening to her and is trying to marry her off for political reasons to a drunkard tells her "You're the best mother in the entire world." I worry for the author, I really do.

Fortunately, and to my surprise, Kira does get a character arc, which went some way to redeeming her in my eyes. She still toxically misinterprets what Robert says and leaves him wondering what he's done wrong, so it's still an unhealthy relationship, but at least she sees some of her most egregious flaws and commits to working on them. He's still in for a world of pain, poor sap.

I picked this up (via Netgalley), despite the presence of a princess, because the blurb sounded intriguing. I kept reading past the middle largely to see if I'd correctly guessed the identity of the main antagonist (I had not; <spoiler>my guess of the stepmother was, in fact, practically the only person who wasn't guilty, so kudos to the author for avoiding that worn-out trope</spoiler>). It wasn't without its positives, notably the character arc of the initially awful female lead (who still has significant issues by the end, but at least is addressing some of them). I considered putting it on the lowest level of my annual recommendation list, which is where I've put books with sound storytelling but bad editing before.

This isn't just badly edited, though. It's inept sometimes to the point of incomprehensibility, and absolutely not ready for publication; it would take, I estimate, a month's solid work by someone skilled to even get close. As always, I feel bound to note that the books I get from Netgalley may, theoretically, receive more editing after I see them and before publication, but this one has so many issues that there's no way it can be fixed in the time, so I'm giving it my "seriously-needs-editing" tag in the confidence that it will still seriously need editing when it's published a couple of weeks from now. Taking that into account, it gets three stars, and lucky to have the third one.