Once Upon a Royal Christmas by Robin Bielman

Blurb:
Colliding with a prince while dog walking isn’t how Rowan Palotay pictured meeting royalty, but then lately her life hasn’t gone according to plan. With one teensy tiny mistake, her job as a news reporter took a turn for the worse and now she’s lucky to have a small pet column in the local newspaper. Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy and magic, but she feels like she’s forever stuck on the naughty list.

Prince Theodore Chenery is in Marietta shortly after the death of his mother to meet his grandparents for the first time. When an accidental run-in—literally—with Rowan leads to an unexpected friendship, he finds himself enchanted with the outspoken, feisty country girl. She’s unlike anyone he’s ever met and her special brand of kindness and honesty make it harder and harder to remember his obligations back home.

Rowan can’t afford one more mistake, and Theo’s future is already mapped out, but when they find it impossible to fight the passion and deep-rooted emotions between them, they discover what matters most. Until their relationship makes worldwide news… and Theo must decide whether to follow his heart, or his royal duty.

     

My Review:
4.5 stars — I received a free copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review/opinion.

OMG, this book is already in the running for favourite Christmas read this year, and I’ve only just begun!  But it was just…I don’t know…just Lenore perfect, you know?  Like there are certain things that just make for a perfect Lenore read, and this one hit soooooo many of them.  I have a weakness for royalty books.  I don’t read them much, but I do enjoy them (and that probably comes from all my Harlequin reading in the past).  But this one turned out to be less about the Royalty aspect, and more about…I don’t know, just a freaking fabulous love story with lots of romantic tension, and laughs, and goofy grins, and not a lot of moments where I wanted to bang my head.  It had the kind of climax and tension where I got what was happening, even if I already knew that they were thinking about things all wrong.  But don’t worry, they got there.

I wondered how the whole reporter thing was going to play out, but it didn’t really play that big a factor.  And her mistake didn’t either.  It was kind of glossed over.  But that was ok, b/c by that point I was so sucked in to the sweetness of their romance, that I didn’t even care.  Both of these characters on their own were my kind of characters.  Rowan was really rather hilarious.  I loved that she could be kind of bold, goofy, a wee bit insecure, but stubborn and still really kind and sweet too.  Sassy and sweet, I love that combination.

And Theo.  Oh Theo.  I want Theo for myself.  He was…AHHH!!!  So sweet, and sexy, and a bit sassy in his own right.  I just adored him to pieces, and I’m not even going to be able to do justice to why….

But the winner for me was them together, and how their romance progressed.  For what was a pretty short novel (or a long novella, depending on how you look at it), I really felt like we got a fabulous romance out of it.  I really believed the progression from lust and infatuation to friendship to more.  I loved watching them get to know each other, asking questions and really developing that base of connection.  And OMG the tension.  I can’t even tell you.  So many butterflies in this book for me.  And the steamy scenes fulfilled on the tension promise.

And all that set in a great holiday atmosphere, with lots of great family and secondary characters.  It made me want to read more Marietta stories, and definitely more stories from this author.  And it obviously got me feeling the magic of the season.  So yeah, success.  Gonna be hard to top.