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The Royals Next Door is sweet and funny, but it also has body and substance. It starts out as extremely fluffy and lighthearted – very much a beach-read – but then it hits you with some surprising depth and truth. You might have to adjust your expectations with this one, but it’s worth the ride.
Spirited British Columbian second grade teacher Piper Evans comes off as your average, ordinary schoolmarm. But she’s a secret romance novel reader, yearning for more, and taking her opinions to the romance podcast she runs. The books are an escape from her real life.Her mentally ill mother struggles with bipolar disorder and her needs take up much of Piper’s time, and she’s still running from a regrettable engagement to a guy who continues to slander her in public after things went south; this last has sent Piper running back home and now she’s reluctant to leave it. She also suffers from Complex PTSD, which isn’t helped by the closed-minded and snobby people who inhabit the island where she came to live five years before.
Then Eddie, the Duke of Fairfax and his Duchess, Monica, move in next door to Piper on her little island, seeking privacy from the paparazzi, and Harrison Cole – their handsome, gruff, tattooed and glutually gifted bodyguard – keeps making Piper’s life difficult. He sees her as a security threat, but between her podcast and her starry view of royal life she doesn’t have a practical grasp on what it means to be a royal family member. They banter and snipe as Harrison tries to settle in.
In Harrison, Piper begins to get a taste of a real romance, and of a life beyond her books and her mother. The grumpy one of course melts for the sunshine one. But a storm-cloud brews on the horizon, threatening to take them both down.
The Royals Next Door has some well-researched rep for mental illness (the author herself suffers from C-PTSD; I didn’t even know that Complex PTSD was a thing, and I’m glad to have been enlightened.), but the conclusion to the mother’s bipolar disorder plotline is perhaps a bit too pat. Only a few weeks of online therapy turns a woman resistant to taking care of herself into someone with an online boyfriend ready to move out of her daughter’s house, which really didn’t work for me.
What did work for me, however; the central romance is naturally as cute as heck. Harrison and Piper are too sweet together, and the way his softer side and gentler interests emerge (he bakes!) is well-done. It’s pure grumpy-and-the-sunshine-one goodness, so if you hate that trope, stay away.
I liked Piper, even though her chirpiness could sometimes feel a bit… much. Her emotional scars feel all-too-familiar and the writer does excellent due diligence in regard to them. Harrison is your typical gruff diamond in the rough – and I liked his layers.
And of course, let’s be realistic – Eddie and Monica are thinly-veiled Meghan and Harry, Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Monica is a Black woman, a former singer who married into the British royal family and is now struggling with the viciousness of the tabloid press. Those characters are kind of bland, and they felt much too much like their source figures instead of unique people.
The small-town Canadian feeling of Piper’s island hometown definitely shines through, and I loved that the place wasn’t idealized like some hometowns are. It even has big box stores!
The Royals Next Door comes in at less than a DIK, but it’s just the right mix of light and fluffy and might appeal to those who want light with a little bit of substance.
Buy it at: Amazon, Audible, or your local independent retailer
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Grade: B
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 20/09/21
Publication Date: 08/2021
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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I wrote a long comment yesterday that apparently got lost when the site was having technical difficulties, but Halle has always been hit-or-miss for me. I loved her series about the fictional royals of various Scandinavian countries (in fact, one of those books, A NORDIC KING, made my list of favorite books read in 2019), but others I’ve tried have felt forced in their fluffiness and humor. I do like bodyguard romances, so—even though the hero is sadly not the heroine’s bodyguard—I’ll probably give THE ROYALS NEXT DOOR a try.
Somewhat o/t, but this made me laugh: I recently finished a contemporary m/m friends-to-lovers romance set in England (JUST A BIT CONFUSING by Alessandra Hazard). The heroes have been best friends since they met at seven years old; both are English: one is middle-class (and actually grew up in straightened circumstances, probably more working-class), the other one is from the very upper echelon of English society—in fact, his father is described as being “eleventh in line to the throne,” which, depending on whether Harry has removed himself and his children from the line of succession, would in reality make this person one of Prince Andrew’s or Prince Edward’s children! I couldn’t help but laugh—under what circumstances would a child that close to the royal family have met and become life-long friends with a working-/middle-class boy? It’s not like the Royal nannies are walking their charges through council estates! (Full disclosure: I grew up on a post-WWII pre-fab housing estate in East Ham in the 1960s; I can’t imagine what would have happened to a royal pram if one had shown up, lol). Anyway, my main thought as I read the book was, “You know how I know this author is not English?” (I should also add that, if you could get over the impossibility of the book’s social set-up, it wasn’t that bad—friends-to-lovers with bi-awakening.)
Great review Lisa, I’m looking forward to reading this one. I’m sad to see on Twitter that the author’s father is in the hospital in Vancouver (heart attack I think) and the situation isn’t good, so it definitely puts a damper on this release for her.
I am losing the will to live with CR if the wretched Sussex pair have now infiltrated it. I doubt very much this book will have much appeal here in the UK where Harry and Meghan are not exactly highly regarded. I am also not attracted to books in which the supporting or MCs are suffering from mental health issues. I know that might sound pretty harsh to some but having dealt with it up close and personal in my own immediate family, it’s about the last thing I want to read about in a CR although I do congratulate Lisa on a very helpful and thoughtful review.
What a completely necessary and constructive comment.
I don’t get the obsession with Meghan and Harry any more than any of the other royals.
What an utterly wretched and completely uncalled for comment. I suggest a nap. They have been known to refresh and drive away spite.
Consider the effect on our 95 year old Queen. She, like any person of great age and, in her case, huge responsibility and undoubted accomplishment, does not deserve the disruption and aggro the Sussexes have caused her. Others in the Royal Family are certainly open to criticism (and possibly prosecution) but HM has, in the eyes of many, been most unfairly used and abused by them.
What an utterly ridiculous statement. This woman has lived through a thousand traumas in her dotage and you think her grandson standing up to the royal system is causing her heartache and not, say, her son being revealed as a massive nonce?
“Agro Sussexes” says a lot to me about how you view the world and, well, yikes on you for that. The fact that you think Harry and Megan should just stiff upper lip their way through blatant racism from his family because his granny’s old says a lot, too. But as to your notion that they are causing her awful harm and heartache when they’ve said in the press that they don’t blame her – generally people who are not on good terms with a person do not name their child after them.
Please do not engage in personal attacks about other commenters.
Calling someone’s statement ridiculous is not a personal attack.
This is a kind of lazy rebuttal. This is like when people make rude and nasty comments about people in larger bodies who they don’t even know (and in many cases who they do know, which is even more damaging) but say the comment is made because they’re “concerned.” Are they that person’s doctor? Have they seen their blood work, and any other determinants of health? Or are they just passing judgment on what they see?
Do you know the queen? You can vouch for what she does and does not need? Or are you just passing judgment based on the little sliver that we’re fed?
By contrast, do the Sussexes deserve the vitriol that has been sent their way? Is it OK that Megan was pushed to suicidal ideation? Because that’s what your note is implying and that’s so deeply disturbing because it is so far removed from the kind of discourse I expected on All About Romance.
Sorry. None of what you said passes the sniff test.
^^ this.