TEST
Some novels are five-course meals – some are boxes of petit fours. Royal Holiday is a petit four incarnate – sweet, light on disagreeable ingredients, simple, quick, fluffy and uncomplicated. But while Royal Holiday is a fun treat of a book, it’s not quite up to the high watermark of the rest of the Wedding Date series.
Royal Holiday is a direct sequel to the previous book in the series, The Wedding Party, and features Vivian Forest, mother of Maddie, heroine of that book. As covered in TWP, Maddie has gone from aspiring stylist to top dresser of the stars thanks to a slot on a reality show, and now another windfall has come her way. Maddie’s mentor is pregnant with twins and confined to bed rest, so Maddie will be going to England to style the Duchess (it’s not stated which one in the book) for Christmas. Vivian is coming along – she’s never been out of America for long before, and to spend time in England is one of her dreams. Though she does have her doubts that they make proper sweet potato pie at Sycamore Cottage in Sandringham.
In spite of the drafty nature of the cottage, Vivian is having a wonderful time. While Maddie’s busy she enjoys a luxurious breakfast – which leads to the Queen’s private secretary, Malcolm Hudson, offering to take Vivian on a private tour of the grounds. She immediately pounces upon the opportunity.
The extremely orderly and reserved Malcolm is not the kind of guy to simply spontaneously offer his services up the way he does to Vivian, but there’s something special about her. Soon the two of them are spending an awful lot of time together. Sparks fly, riding lessons are given, snowballs sail and kisses under the mistletoe are exchanged. But Vivian just received a major promotion at her job as a social worker back home, and by New Year’s Day she’ll have to return to the reality of life on the other side of the pond – won’t she?
Royal Holiday’s heroine provides its biggest and best draw. Vivian has a wonderfully sweet and lively sparkle to her personality that’s super appealing and makes her an entertaining heroine. I liked mild-mannered, duty-bound Malcolm as well, though his personality is a bit more muted, and it was nice to spend a little more time with fun-loving Maddie, though Theo (the hero in the previous book) is disappointingly and entirely absent aside from some quick references. And yes, we spend a few moments with the Queen herself.
The general tone of the book is one of wish fulfillment and gentle escapism. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this, and it’s a relief to mentally transport yourself to England and imagine clomping about on the back of one of the palace horses, or having a delicious meal right beside Vivian.
It’s lovely to have a book about an older hero and heroine who’ve both raised their families and lived their lives, but aren’t dead yet and have a lot of room left to play with, to fall into heedless and giddy love like a teenager.
But because the book’s low on conflict, there has to be some imported – in this case via Malcolm’s relationship with his teenage nephew, who has chosen to reject Oxford for art school, disappointing mentor Malcolm with his lack of practicality. This causes Malcolm to turn surly when around Vivian and leads to – you guessed it – a Big Misunderstanding Plot because she thinks he’s rejecting her. The lack of originality in this part of the plot is disappointing, especially when its basic underpinnings are another version of Guillory’s stock two-people-fall-in-love-during-a-limited-time-frame story.
But warm and fluffy will likely overcome the sense of ‘been there, done that’ that sometimes colors the prose. Royal Holiday is a very nice, Christmasy romance that comes highly recommended, but stands just a notch below its series-mates, and thus just a step below DIK status.
Note: At time of writing, Amazon gives the page count as 303; the copy I read had 180 pages.
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Grade: B+
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 28/09/19
Publication Date: 10/2019
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
Lisa Fernandes is a writer, reviewer and recapper who lives somewhere on the East Coast. Formerly employed by Firefox.org and Next Projection, she also currently contributes to Women Write About Comics. Read her blog at http://thatbouviergirl.blogspot.com/, follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thatbouviergirl or contribute to her Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/MissyvsEvilDead or her Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/missmelbouvier
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Sorry, Lisa, but….. NO THANKS. I am personally sick to the back teeth of “The Duchess” (as if we don’t know to whom this refers) and you are probably aware that she is not in the highest regard everywhere in the UK at present. I expect you know this and why it’s happened. The only thing it appears that is lacking in this book is a bit about the father residing in Rosarito Beach. I would expect that, to the average British reader, this book is rather ridiculous, even a little patronising and a teensy offensive by bringing in HM.
You shouldn’t let that prevent you from reading the book, TBH. “The Duchess” doesn’t even exist as a material character in the volume, just an excuse. The Queen of England really doesn’t have that much to do with it either.
And yes, I’m aware of the mixed opinions Megan Markle has stirred up, but it’s got nothing to do with the book.