Jess Michaels

To Protect a Princess by Jess Michaels
Regency Royals #1

Oh, how I love stepping into the pages of this author’s books! I am swept away to a time and place I can easily imagine and often find myself young and in love and eagerly reading to find out what I, as the heroine, will do next. In this book…sigh…well…I fell in love again and eagerly await what will happen next. The nice thing about books is that I get to be someone else every time I read a new book!

What I liked:
* Princess show more Ilaria: intelligent, independent, strong, caring, family-oriented, dutiful, capable, likable, finds herself in a difficult situation, willing to make the best of it, knows what she wants, hopeful but accepting. Really liked her.
* Captain Jonah Crawford: retired naval officer, caring, capable, strong, wise, knows his “place”, overcame difficult childhood, rational, lethal, protective, knows what he wants, doesn’t dare to dream…too much…everything one could ask for in a book boyfriend.
* The make-believe country aspect that allows more leeway to tell the story
* The plot, setting and way the story is written
* The way the royal family cares about one another and overcame the difficulties faced being royal
* That it is believable
* Wondering who is behind the assassination attempts against Ilaria
* Revisiting places and people from previous series/books
* The Donville Masquerade portions of the book…and other steamy bits :)
* That Ilaria was not a shrinking violet
* The way Sasha was a steadying person and friend-sister-companion to Ilaria (eager to read her story)
* That I felt part of the story and enjoyed it all.
* The introduction to the royal family and thinking about how the four future stories will potentially be told and seeing that Sasha is up next.
* The cover…beautiful!
* All of it really except…

What I didn’t like:
* The baddies out to create trouble for Athawick and kill Ilaria
* The way royals were bartered for political gain and the impact it had/has on their lives
* Having to wait for the next book in the series

Did I like this book? No, I *loved* it!
Would I read more in this series? Definitely!

Thank you to NetGalley and The Passionate Pen, LLC for the ARC – This is my honest review.

5 Stars show less

More of a four-star book, but one of my personal pet peeves as a therapist is when characters, particularly men, are articulate and insightful about their emotional unavailability and commitmentphobia. I rarely come across people who are all “I can never love, it is too scary and vulnerable!” That’s just not how these issues manifest. Still, there was an insecure, plain spinster and a few of my favorite themes, so I liked it. (3.5 stars)

Enjoyed this a lot - the unusual boldness of Annabelle Flynn v the cautious humility of alpha Marcus Rivers. This teaches us something about the limitations on marrying across different status levels. Although it seems an obvious point, I haven't come across this as the basis for an historical romance novel plot very often so a pleasant change..and creating an interesting tension. A very appealing honesty on both their parts was the way through.

Series: The Shelley Sisters
Publication Date: 1/7/2020
Number of Pages: 280

OMGoodness – what a delightful book for this author to write as her return to full-length novels. The characters are delightful, the story is well-written and well-plotted, and the villain is mysterious (is he truly a villain?)

Nobody can tell the triplets apart, at least in looks. Anne is the wild one, the ‘free spirit’ who acts first and thinks later. Juliana is the calm, even-keeled, responsible ‘fixer’, who show more runs the household. Thomasina is the pleaser, the one who brings peace and comfort to others – even at the cost of her own. As far as their father is concerned, they are a commodity to be bartered in marriage as he chooses and they are totally interchangeable in his eyes. (You won’t like him.) He has negotiated a marriage contract for one of his daughters – and the groom doesn’t care which one – so, Anne is chosen because she is the most troublesome of the three and it will get her off his hands.

Jasper Percival Stephen Kincaid, the Earl of Harcourt, is left to clean up the mess left behind by his father and his half-brother. He was never meant to be the Earl and both his cold, mean, hateful father and his errant half-brother made that abundantly clear to him. Yet, here he is, with a title he didn’t want, trying to clean up a mess he didn’t make by bartering himself and his title for a bride with a large dowry. He’ll marry one of the Shelley triplets and he doesn’t care which one – he’s never even met them. He has no intention of loving whichever one it is – he has spent his entire life building walls around himself and he has absolutely no intention of lowering those barriers for anyone. He will make that very, very, very plain to his new bride.

The three Shelley ladies, along with their father, have been staying at Jasper’s estate in the Lake District in preparation for Anne’s wedding to Jasper. Thomasina has found herself attracted to the Earl and she knows it is wrong and fights it as best she can. Yet, when Anne begs Thomasina to switch places with her and attend the final engagement ball in her place, Thomasina agrees – simply because Anne doesn’t care for Jasper and convinces Thomasina that she just needs the quiet time to come to grips with the marriage. When Thomasina returns to her rooms after she leaves the ball, she goes to check on Anne – and finds a note from Anne. Anne says that she’s found the love of her life and has run away to Gretna Green with him.

Jasper is incensed and insists that one of the other sisters fulfill Anne’s role. That will save scandal and still fill his coffers. However, it turns out he’s not quite so indifferent to the sisters as he’d thought and insists that Thomasina will be the one to replace Anne.

Jasper quickly learns that there is more to Anne’s disappearance than there first appeared to be. It seems his deceased half-brother may have set some things in motion that were now coming back to bite him and to harm the Shelley family. As Jasper and Thomasina grow closer, his fears for Anne – and then Thomasina grow as well. He tries to keep that knowledge from Thomasina – but isn’t able to do so. Can they salvage their relationship in the face of Jaspers' lack of sharing and untruths? Can they find what the villain wants and save Anne? Will Jasper finally realize that he loves Thomasina? You’ll just have to read the story to find the answer.

I definitely recommend this as a lovely read. I had hoped that there would be a trip to London and Jasper’s mother would realize what her coldness had cost her and that maybe there would be some softening in her. However, that didn’t happen and since the book has ended, I assume it will never happen. There is still a chance that the triplet’s father will finally have some sort of epiphany since there are two more books to go.

I can hardly wait for the next book!

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. show less