melissay

Whitney has been in love with Derek Knightley since the day she was paired up with him in a mentor program. He leaves unexpectedly to go and run the London theme park leaving Whitney without a mentor and wondering what she did wrong. Since then she has spent the 8 years since he left wishing she could forget his existence. 8 years later Derek is back and the feelings Whitney felt for him come rushing back like a tsunami. 8 years ago Whitney would’ve had hearts in her eyes at even the slightest of advancement from Derek, now she’s built up her walls and wants to avoid him at all costs. Derek is confident and has decided that he wants Whitney in his life, and as the sole heir to the Knightley Kingdom he is more than used to getting what he wants.

I’ve read so many novels by R.S. Grey now and I know every time I pick one up that I’m going to love it. His Royal Highness is one of my favourite R.S. Grey novels. The whole story evolves around a Disneyland style park. I love Disneyland so a novel set in a theme park that revolves around a character who dresses up as the parks meetable Princess, where staff go through underground tunnels to avoid being seen by the public and even the owner of the park leaves in the castle itself…or so the rumour has it, was always going to be something I enjoyed. If you’ve ever loved going to Disney and wanted to read a romance novel that is set in a theme park like Disney then this is absolutely the book for you.

I had mixed opinions on Whitney. On the one hand I can completely see why she held a grudge against Derek for so long. He disappeared off the face of the earth, sent her one email saying sorry for not being her mentor anymore and didn’t even acknowledge the fact that she asked him out. I feel that if I was in her position I would’ve reacted in exactly the same way. However, when you read about it in a book it comes across as slightly irritating, Whitney had just turned 18 when they first met, Derek was much older and was getting ready to open the London branch of the theme park. At the time they were in completely different stages of their lives so you can see why Derek somewhat brushed her off.

As the book got going though and Whitney somewhat lets go off the past I started to love reading about her. She adores the park and couldn’t imagine working anywhere else. When in character Whitney gives every child the best experience they could ask for from a Princess and Whitney still lives in her dorm room on site to look after the younger members of staff. I instantly liked Derek, even in the beginning and he was very busy with the company he still took time for Whitney. I loved reading about Derek even more once he took on a low grade job in the park as Whitney’s Prince Charming – a meetable character.

This book is quite simply – fantastic. It tapped into my love of theme parks and romance novels perfectly. I loved the characters and I really loved the storyline. The romance part itself is a very slow burner but that doesn’t mean that you cant feel the tension between Whitney and Derek oozing from the pages throughout the story anyway. If you’re like me and love Disney style theme parks and romance books then you will love His Royal Highness. It has become an instant favourite book for me.

Synopsis – 

I’ve spent eight years wishing I’d fall out of love with Derek Knightley. Blowing out birthday candles, chasing after shooting stars, making it rain spare change into mall fountains – every time it’s the same wish: forget about Derek.

But the day he walks back into my life, I realize there are two things time has yet to soften: my feelings for him and his chiselled jawline.

It’s infuriating that my heart still races when he walks into a room. I refuse to fall prey to old unrequited love, so I decide the less I’m around him, the better. Avoidance is key.

Unfortunately, Derek isn’t going to make it easy. As a teenager, I would have crawled on my hands and knees to attract his attention. Now I can’t seem to escape it.

I’m not sure why he’s bothering. He’s not just out of my league – he’s out of my tax bracket. As the sole heir to the Knightley Company, he’s as close to American royalty as you can get. As for me, I’m just a part-time princess at Knightley’s flagship magical theme park.

I spend my days playing make-believe, but Derek has no use for fairy tales. His unwavering confidence makes it clear he think I’ll surrender in the end.

He’s just biding his time.

Making me sweat.

His Royal Highness always gets what he wants. And he wants me.

Laurie thinks she has her life pretty much worked out, she is doing great in a job that she loves and she found her soulmate in her childhood sweetheart Dan. That is, until Dan comes in one day and tells her its over, based on the excuse that he doesn’t want children and Laurie does. If this wasn’t heart-breaking enough, Laurie has to work with Dan and soon has to contend with the office gossips talking about Dan and his pregnant girlfriend. In a bizarre turn of fate Laurie gets stuck with the office playboy Jamie. Laurie wants something to stop the gossips talking about her and Dan’s relationship and Jamie needs a steady girlfriend to impress the bosses so he can get the promotion he’s after. They both agree to fake date, with photos of their perfect relationship being documented on social media. Soon, Laurie realises that she’s actually falling for her fake boyfriend and the lines between fake and real start to blur.

This book is fantastic. It plays into every single insecurity you have about being in a relationship so wonderfully. I was completely sucked into Laurie’s story and I was distraught when Dan left her. You know its a good book when you are drawn so heavily into the story that it starts to affect your own feelings in real life and this book definitely started to weave its way into my real life feelings the whole time I was reading it. It was like someone had taken out my own heart and stamped on it particularly during the early sections of this book. The author writes in such a realistic way which means that you can relate to the story and characters and that for me is the real strong point of this novel.

The characters have personality and that is something I like from this story. Jamie although from an outsiders point of view is seen as a playboy that sleeps around half of the females in the office so much so that his reputation follows him from job to job. However, from the minute he meets Laurie he treats her with respect, doesn’t try anything on, is this first to spring to Laurie’s defence and frankly just seems an all around nice guy. Laurie is understandably hurt and wants to hurt her ex even ten percent of how much he hurt her. However, she doesn’t use Jamie. She isn’t faking when meeting his family and friends, and even when they’re together they’re just having a good time as friends. Although Laurie, understandably, has her moments of being absolutely distraught that her long term boyfriend has left her, she doesn’t dwell too much on it. She’s too smart, independent and driven to stay in that depressive state and I like that. Even Dan, who you should hate for leaving Laurie so unexpectedly you cant by the end of the novel.

This is one of the best romance novels I’ve read in a long time. It’s such a simple concept a breakup which leads to a fake office romance but this book is so much more than that. It got into my brain, it was all I could think about until I got to the end and when I did finish the book it just made my heart so happy. The romance aspect of it isn’t full of sneaky fake kisses or anything like that, Jamie and Laurie are strictly friends with some well angled Instagram photos that make it look like they’re more. The friend aspect of this is what helps to make this book so good, its not a rushed romantic situation but you as a reader can definitely see the lines start to blur between fake relationship to friendship to real relationship.

Genuinely this is one of my favourite books I’ve read so I couldn’t recommend you buy this book more.

Synopsis – 

If faking love is this easy… how do you know when it’s real?

When her partner of over a decade suddenly ends things, Laurie is left reeling—not only because they work at the same law firm and she has to see him every day. Her once perfect life is in shambles and the thought of dating again in the age of Tinder is nothing short of horrifying. When news of her ex’s pregnant girlfriend hits the office grapevine, taking the humiliation lying down is not an option. Then a chance encounter in a broken-down elevator with the office playboy opens up a new possibility.

Jamie Carter doesn’t believe in love, but he needs a respectable, steady girlfriend to impress their bosses. Laurie wants a hot new man to give the rumor mill something else to talk about. It’s the perfect proposition: a fauxmance played out on social media, with strategically staged photographs and a specific end date in mind. With the plan hatched, Laurie and Jamie begin to flaunt their new couple status, to the astonishment—and jealousy—of their friends and colleagues. But there’s a fine line between pretending to be in love and actually falling for your charming, handsome fake boyfriend…

Sam has had the worst day in the world, normally she has her life relatively on track but it’s the day of her grandfathers funeral and she just needs a distraction. Sam starts talking to the hot guy sat next to her at a bar and before she knows it they end up having a one night stand. They both agree beforehand that it would only ever be a one night thing to the extent that neither would know the others name. That night was the much needed fun that Sam needed except that when she walks into the office the next day, her new employee Ryan, just happens to be the guy from the night before. Sam has a strict no relationship with employee’s rule but will her heart let her make an exception with Ryan?

I really enjoyed the storyline. Its an office romance style novel except the roles are reversed with the female being the boss and they male being the employee. The company is just a small business and everyone is very friendly and supportive to one another so the arrival of moody Ryan causes a bit of a disruption. Top that off with the fact that Ryan is literally the only person at the company who can develop the companies new app before a rival business beats them too it.

Even based on the blurb the reader knows its going to be Sam and Ryan who have the one night stand but I really enjoyed reading it. I like how resistant he was to even talk to her and her constant need just to have someone to talk to – I feel like in those opening few chapters you find out so much about the two’s personalities. The characters on the surface constantly fit that happy, chatty vs moody stereotype but as you keep reading you realise that there is much more to these characters than that. However, some parts of the characters personalities such as Ryan’s constant need to be reassured by Sam started to get a little irritating at times.

Overall I liked this book. Is it going to be a book you read time and time again? No. But if you’re looking for a office romance book that’s nice and easy to read I would definitely pick this one.

Synopsis –

Sam Huxton doesn’t do one-night stands, especially not with men she’s just met! But the hot guy at the bar was hard to resist and one night is all they share – no names, no numbers, just some much needed fun…

Until the same guy walks into Sam’s life the next day as her new employee.  Sam never mixes business with pleasure and makes it clear an office fling with Ryan is off-limits.  But after-hours…one thing can lead to another. Can Sam trust her heart and her business with the new guy?

Jude was only seven years old when a mysterious man turned up on her and her families doorstep and murdered both of her parents. The man who murders her parents then stole away Jude and her two sisters to live in the High Court Of Faerie. Ten years later Jude is desperate to fit in the world of Faerie, except she’s always considered the bottom of the heap because she is mortal and human. Jude somewhat befriends the future King of Faerie and finds herself tangled in the world of trickery and deception within the palace. Jude soon realises that she needs to risk her life to save Faerie from crashing down around them.

This book has been out two years now and probably for the best part of those two years I have been repeatedly told to read this book. You know when your to be read pile gets too big so you don’t buy many books but then when you do its always a latest release you got excited about so never buy the older books you want to read? This for me was that book! With Christmas money I finally caved and bought this book and now I’ve finished it I instantly regret not purchasing it sooner!

When I started to read this book I wondered what all the hype is around it. It’s been a while since I read a fantasy novel and I’d somewhat forgotten how long it takes me to get into a new world. However, within a few chapters this book got me hooked so much so I finished it within a few days of starting it! It is completely worth sticking with this book and I think the slow moving beginning is important for you to get to grips with the world and characters.

The world is so wonderfully explained and you can imagine every single palace and the world itself quite vividly very quickly. I found it particularly good when Jude was creeping around areas she shouldn’t be in. It’s interesting that this world is just a stones throw away from the human world and that Jude and his sisters can literally just fly to enter the human world for a visit.

A big part of what makes this book so good in the characters. Every character your introduced to is likeable which is strange considering the entire what through you aren’t sure who you can trust and who you cant. You follow the story through the eyes of Jude and after her tragic beginning you expect her to maybe be a little dysfunctional so it comes as no surprise that she longs to be accepted into this new world she’s now apart of. I found Jude completely likeable and it was interesting to read about how she’s treated by other characters and how she views them.

The storyline too is fantastic. It keeps you on your toes very early on. The story has twists all over the place and I think if you asked me what I thought would happen when I started I wouldn’t have guess the ending. The story was quite intense too and really did keep you held in suspense from start to finish. I also liked the odd bit of romance that was weaved into the story, it is predominately a fantasy novel but I did enjoy the potential love interest as a sub plot.

As you can tell I loved this book! Thankfully this book has two more in the series so you can bet I’ll be downloading them straight onto my Kindle!

Synopsis – 

Of course I want to be like them. They’re beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever.

And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.

Jude was seven when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years late, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

To win a place at the court, she must defy him – and face the consequences.

As Jude becomes more deeply embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, she discovers her own capacity for trickery and bloodshed. But as betrayal threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.

Luna Lark has had a tough time in life since her husband to be left her jilted at the aisle. She’s not been able to shake off her sadness since, so she decides to escape to Ondingside in order to write her new novel. A remote village in Scotland in the middle of nowhere that is home to just one hundred and fifty residents seemed the perfect place to escape. The perfect place that is until the little village gets a freak snow storm in July which freezes the town.

Before you read on, this blog post contains some slight spoilers so if you want to read this book and don’t want to know anything stop reading now!

This book…where do I begin! The opening chapter where Luna was left standing outside the church on her wedding day with the horrible realisation that her husband to be wasn’t going to turn up – I had such high hopes for this book from this. I thought it was going to be the type of romance novel where a bad event happens to a character and then they found love again in an unsuspecting place. However, this was not really the case. I went into the book pretty blind to the plot and I admit that I just wanted to read it as I really like the author Carrie Hope Fletcher, so the fact the plot went in a different direction to what I expected was my own fault for not reading the blurb.

My main real issue with the book happened relatively early on as I was so utterly confused during the beginning of the book. I read a chapter and then the chapter repeated again with some slightly different changes and it took me to the third time that I read the same story again that I realised that it was something to do with the plot and not some printing error in my copy of the book. It was during this point where the days were repeating that I was close to abandoning ship on this book. Personally, for me it was just too repetitive and I got quite bored of reading the same day where the character did the same things, again and again and again! Yes, the main character did go through some progression as a person as she kept on repeating the days but for me it wasn’t enough and it was just an effort to get through it. I do truly get what the author was trying to do by repeating the days especially when all the characters are blissfully unaware of the day reoccurring, but I really think it could’ve been done in a quicker way that didn’t make the reader loose interest.

I have no real feelings towards the characters. Usually in a book I find something relatable in them and that is what gets my attention but none of the characters were relatable for me. Although the characters go through a little development it’s hard for them considering that none of them can remember the day before. I think I didn’t go on enough of an adventure with any of the characters considering it was just seeing them living the same day in slightly different ways. I didn’t care what happened to any of them and I wasn’t routing for the potential love story to happen. Strangely one of my favourite characters was someone who was introduced further on in the story, you read a little of his backstory before he entered the village and shook things up. He had spirit and something about him compared with the two dimensional characters living in the village.

Once you manage to get past this however and the story starts to move on from the looping day I did find myself enjoying the story. It was interesting to read how the characters react to the realisation they were living in a never ending looping day with no memory of the day before. I quite enjoyed how the end wasn’t quite the happily ever after you expect from a book of this genre either. However, the ending didn’t resolve many of the plot points and I’m now left with quite a few unanswered questions that I would very much like the answer too.

If the first half of the book was as good as the first half this book could’ve genuinely been good. I did like the plot idea, I just wished it had been executed better. I am a big fan of the author and I do think she’s talented, plus her other books have been ok, just for me I sadly didn’t get on with this book.

Synopsis –

The BRAND NEW NOVEL from Sunday Times bestselling author Carrie Hope Fletcher, coming October 2019.

‘Reminded me so much of Cecelia Ahern’ Ali McNamara
‘Our go-to for spellbinding stories with a magical edge’ Heat

*****
Luna Lark used to love her name, but that was before people started saying it differently.

I’m so sorry, Luna.
Are you alright, Luna?
Everything will be okay, Luna.

Now Luna is taking back control by starting again in the most remote place she could find: Ondingside, a magical little town with barely a hundred and fifty people in the middle of nowhere important. She’ll finally finish her latest novel, get herself back to normal, maybe even find love (and continue being a hopeless romantic).

But on her first night in Ondingside a freak July snow fall freezes the town. Snowed in, the town stands still. Can Luna break out of the monotony and do what she came to do?

Marriage On Madison Avenue tells the story of Audrey Tate. Audrey thought she loved a man who she believed was finalising his divorce, in reality she was one of three woman this man was stringing along. When the girls find out, they form a pact to look out for each other and warn each other off any future bad relationships. Now the other two girls are all settled down in a good relationship that just leaves Audrey. Audrey has had disastrous relationship one after another and really is starting to feel like her happily after will never happen. So when Audrey’s best friend since she was a kid, Clarke West, announces to his mother that he’s engaged to her she goes along with it on the condition they would break off the engagement within a couple of days. However, the pair quickly discover that pretending to be in a relationship together may not be as easy as they anticipated.

First of all I can’t believe that this is book number three in a series and second of all I can’t believe that I’ve never read or even heard of the first two books in the series because if they’re anything like book three this is definitely going to be one of the best romance series. It’s been quite a long time now since I read a book that I absolutely adored and this definitely fits in that category.

Audrey and Clarke are great characters and I loved reading about them. Audrey on the surface seems relatively fake especially given that her career is being an influencer, making money from posting up photos on Instagram. She somewhat thrives on the good press and business opportunities she gets from being engaged to Clarke. Clarke as well has his flaws, he’s a womaniser and knows that he is absolutely not the kind of guy to settle down. However, when you read the book you quickly realise that the pair are so much more than they appear on the surface and what I particular enjoyed reading is the love the pair have for each other, even as friends. No matter what they’re both always there for each other and that is such a fantastic character trait.

The storyline itself, you already know what is going to happen from quite early on in the story. Does that ruin it when it actually happens? Absolutely not. The last few chapters when things are really heating up and you get the speech which just makes your heart melt with the sheer romantic-ness of it all – its everything you wanted from this book. I absolutely loved the way in which the author writes, she captures your attention from the word go and you go through the emotional journey with the characters are you’re reading. I laughed, I cried and I wanted to go into the story and scream in frustration at the characters for not seeing that they loved each other as more than friends, if that isn’t the sign of a good story I don’t know what is.

I knew from the blurb that this was going to be my kind of story but I never anticipated loving this story as much as I did. It’s very rare than I buy a physical edition of a book nowadays as I just don’t have the space so I have to really love a book to buy the physical copy but as soon as I finish writing this I’m heading to Waterstones to preorder the book.

Marriage On Madison Avenue is out on the 28th January and if you like romance novels then this book is just about as good as you’re going to get and I truly couldn’t recommend it more.

Synopsis – 

From New York Times bestselling author Lauren Layne, comes the final instalment of the Central Park Pact series, a heartful and laugh-out-loud romantic comedy that’s perfect for fan of Sally Thorne and Christina Lauren.

Can guys and girls ever be just friends? according to Audrey Tate and Clarke West, absolutely. After all, they’ve been best friends since childhood without a single romantic entanglement. Clarke is the charming playboy Audrey can always count on, and he knows that the ever-loyal Audrey will never not play along with his strategy for dodging his matchmaking mother – announcing he’s already engaged…to Audrey.

But what starts out as a playful game between two best friends turns into something infinitely more complicated ,as just-for-show kisses begin to stir up forbidden feelings. As the faux wedding date looms closer, Audrey and Clarke realize that they can never go back to the way things were, but deep down, do they really want to?