Romance Books Reviews & Treats

Unassuming 19yo heroine accidentally meets the future king of a Medditerrenean kingdom who’s expected to take her flashy & more beautiful older sister as his bride. But upon meeting virginal heroine Hero changes his mind & plans on marrying her instead. The day after their widely-publicized wedding his father dies & so does their honeymoon. Heroine struggles with her new role as queen & the lack of closeness in her marriage. Yet she hopes that with time & her taking a stand she can manage to shake up his well-ordered world. She slowly succeeds but she holds a big secret. Hero doesn’t know that she’s been taking birth-control pills & he’s been wanting an heir from the start of their marriage. What will happen to their marriage when he finds out?

I’m a Kendrick fan. Just like her other books, she writes this one with her usual emotional flare. The hidden desires & emotional distance between the main characters were palpable. The characters exhibited some growth, especially the heroine. She began as a timid & naïve bride who did her best to not displease Hero. After a few months of being married to him, she grew up quickly & started asserting herself. I particularly liked how she snapped out of her hurt & self-pity at the end & went back to Hero to fight for their marriage. Hero wasn’t as emotionally accessible as heroine. He was pretty much very formal, controlled, & distant throughout the book. It was a little stretch for me to believe that he was suddenly stricken with this vast insight into his lack of empathy with & neglect of heroine & let himself be emotionally vulnerable to her. A stretch but it could happen.

Recommended.