Keira Dominguez

Princess Clara is the youngest of the Queen of Sondmark's children, and she's desperate to get her mother to trust her with real work, something more worthwhile than the minor events with pre-written speeches that are all she's currently allowed to do. Unfortunately, while she was away at college in the United States, she assumed she had a little more freedom to behave as she wished and ended up with the nickname "Party Princess." In order to get past that, she knows she has to behave perfectly.

Which doesn't mean she can't nurse a little crush on Lieutenant Commander Max Andersen of Her Majesty's Royal Navy. When an accident lands the two of them in the tabloids, Clara knows she should do her best to put distance between the two of them, but she can't resist the chance to get to know him a little better. They agree to just be friends, but can they keep to that agreement as the attraction between the two of them grows?

I picked this one up because the cover art is cute and I enjoy occasionally reading royal romances. This featured a believable royal family and good world-building, with lots of details about Sondmark and its relationships with other fictional countries (the United States existed but none of the real-world European countries did). The author laid the groundwork for future books for Alma, Clara's eldest sister, and Noah, the heir - Alma was the perfect princess engaged to someone who barely paid any attention to her, and Noah was the playboy prince who had a surprising interest in Caroline, her mother's drab and professional private secretary.

For the most part, the romance between Clara and Max was just okay. Very nice and comfortable. In order to keep Clara from constantly having the press in her face, Max suggested that they mostly meet at his home, which struck me as at least as risky for both their reputations as meeting in public places, but whatever. They had dinner, watched movies, painted his house, etc. - it was all very nice.

The last 60 or so pages were much more emotional and riveting, and I really enjoyed how things worked out, from the way Clara resolved things with her mother to the way to the way Max's knowledge about his ship was worked into his part of the story.

Weirdly, the next book in the series appears to be Princess Freja's. She was mentioned a few times in this book, but her story didn't get nearly as much setup as Alma's or Noah's. Since I'd like to try more of this series, I'll probably read it, but I'm not nearly as interested in Freja's story as I am in Alma's or Noah's.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (altro)

Fantasy and Regency Romance combined, sign me up!

Due to an unexpected accident Penny Thornton has lost her magic. She used to have the power to fly into the air, but now she’s earthbound and at a loss. When a letter from her old governess comes laden with magic, Penny is determined to find the source to try to restore her own. Stealing her governess’s identity, Penny heads off to the wilds of Scotland to try to find a way to reclaim her lost magic and finds a broken family in need of more than she is prepared to give, instead.

I was prepared for this to be far more gothic in nature than it was, but it actually has the pacing and lightness of a novel from the Regency era. If you like Jane Austen and want more of the same gentle sort of story only with modern language and writing style, this book is for you. It’s most like Persuasion in that it is very reflective and focused on small details that add up to something larger, small incidents and small kindnesses or slights that seem very important and strongly felt. It also reminded me a bit of both Anne Bronte’s Agnes Grey (a story about another governess facing extreme challenges) and Charlotte Bronte’s Villette in tone, but again, with totally modern language.

I would actually classify this far more like sweet romance than the fantasy and SF that it came up with as a category on NetGalley. The magic is a major driver of the plot, but the relationships among the characters are what makes this book work so well. And people who are here for magic shouldn’t be driven away by the romance aspects because there are a couple of smooches and that’s it. It’s all slow-burn unresolved sexual tension and well done at that.

Dominguez is wonderful at characterization. The relationships in this story seem earned. Nobody is an obvious stereotype, even the person who turns out to be the villain of the piece, and it’s a wonderfully subtle sort of villainy, too. Kudos. The children, who are often grating in this sort of story, are actually well-rounded human beings and not just plot devices. They are all given moments to shine as individuals and reasons for us to care for them.

I’ve read a lot of books and I saw a lot of the plot of this coming a mile away, but I still enjoyed the journey to get to the dénouement and that speaks to the author’s skill. Penny is very young and you enjoy watching her figure it out even if you already have.

The one thing that is really bad about this book is the editing. There are egregious errors in the text, including continuity errors with character names, spelling, punctuation, paragraphs, and other really obvious things that should have been caught by any competent editor. Things that would have been caught by spellcheck or a run through any online editing tool. Just pony up for the pro version of Grammarly and you wouldn’t have had 90% of this. If your publisher doesn’t have your back, or doesn’t employ editors with the skill set to find comma errors, spelling errors and continuity errors, it’s up to you as author to give them a completely clean manuscript. The issues were so frequent that it kept pulling me out of the story and that’s a shame, because the story is terrific.
If you’re not an ex English teacher like me, you probably will be less annoyed with the errors and will enjoy this book even more than I did. I will look for more of this author’s work.… (altro)