Tuesday 5 April 2016

Review ~ Paper Princess by Erin Watt (Elle Kennedy and Jen Frederick)


Book Description:

From strip clubs and truck stops to southern coast mansions and prep schools, one girl tries to stay true to herself.

These Royals will ruin you…

Ella Harper is a survivor—a pragmatic optimist. She’s spent her whole life moving from town to town with her flighty mother, struggling to make ends meet and believing that someday she’ll climb out of the gutter. After her mother’s death, Ella is truly alone. 

Until Callum Royal appears, plucking Ella out of poverty and tossing her into his posh mansion among his five sons who all hate her. Each Royal boy is more magnetic than the last, but none as captivating as Reed Royal, the boy who is determined to send her back to the slums she came from.

Reed doesn’t want her. He says she doesn’t belong with the Royals.

He might be right.

Wealth. Excess. Deception. It’s like nothing Ella has ever experienced, and if she’s going to survive her time in the Royal palace, she’ll need to learn to issue her own Royal decrees.


Buy Links:



Our Review:

Reviewed by Donna ~ 5 stars
***ARC received for an honest review***



“No one wants to be ruined. We all want to be saved.”


I may be forty-two but I love my YA reads, especially when they are written really well. These reads give me the teenage years I never had and never knew I missed and I love to live vicariously through them. From the first to last page I was captivated by this story, I was pulled in from the very beginning, couldn’t put it down and read it in one sitting. Life was put on pause as I lived with the Royals, yes they are dysfunctional, yes they have a tonne of issues but most of all they were enigmatic, intriguing, intoxicating and contradicting, but I desperately wanted to get to know them. This book is one of my favourite reads of the year, it has left its mark and I cannot stop thinking about them.


“You’re playing a dangerous game…”
“I don’t know any other way to play it.”


There is another series that has a similar vibe to this and anyone that knows me knows that it is my crack. It is something that you know you shouldn’t love but yet you read it anyway and walk away with a mighty high and that pertains to this book too. Despite the angst and the drama, I felt like I was floating at the end, floating on a fantastic read that ignited every synapses and had my brain and heart running a mile a minute.

Ella had had a tough life, she never knew her father and her mother had only enlightened her with the barest of details…a navy man, a short port stop and a pregnancy later. Her father never knew she existed. Her mother had done her best to provide a life for Ella, she got sick and Ella was left to fend for herself while trying to put herself through school and pay her mother’s medical bills. Holding down three jobs while studying was taking its toll, but it was a means to an end…until the end came.


“I suddenly realize that he loved me. Or at least, he’d wanted to love me. And my heart aches that I never got the chance to love him back.”


The Royals, what can I say about them…they are one of a kind, truly. Having lost their mother their family is in a period of readjustment and one that is not working very well, so the last thing they need is a new addition to the family. The “sister” they never had…and never wanted. These five boys are a tight knit bunch and have each other’s backs. They rule their posh college and are revered by everyone, everybody wants to be them or be in bed with them. They make the rules; they break the rules…they are the rules. Although Ella and the Royals are not related by blood, Ella’s father was Callum Royal’s best friend, they were in the Navy together and in his absence, Callum is her next of kin. It was a real princess story, from rags to riches…these riches though were not wanted and Ella is thrust into a family she doesn’t know, opulence she doesn’t care for and a school full of bitches that she becomes fresh meat for them to taunt and tease.


“This house is an illusion. It’s polished and pretty, but the dream Callum is trying to sell is as flimsy as paper. Nothing stays shiny forever in this world.”


I loved Ella with a passion, this girl has a backbone, sass and spunk. She takes no crap, she says it how it is and she stands up for herself. The Royal boys do not know what has hit them. She isn’t intimidated, she feeds of their anger and soon has them all wrapped around her little pinkie, but it takes time, a lot of drama…she earns her Royal badge and wears it with pride. Those boys become her best friends, they would do anything for her and she would do anything for them. She brings calm to their storm, she settles them and grounds them, but they still bite. Reed maybe more than others…seriously smoking chemistry.


“I don’t belong in splendor; I belong in squalor. That’s what I know. It’s what I’m comfortable with, because squalor doesn’t lie to you. It’s not wrapped in a pretty package. It is what it is.”


This was an all-consuming read, it was filled to the brim with drama and angst, I was stressed, my heart was in my mouth, I even jumped up and down…yes at forty-two I was off my rocker. I love it when an author, or in this case authors can totally submerse you in some other family’s life, so much so that you live and breathe it. Elle Kennedy and Jen Frederick did just that. The writing was seamless, you cannot tell where one author started and another began. The flow was perfect, it was a breeze to read and as the percentage read increased the anxiety levels increased, I didn’t want it to end.


“I’ve fallen from the sky and I’m not sure I can get up. Not this time.”


The ending, OMG the ending…blindsided, well and truly, heart in mouth and now anxiously awaiting the tortuous, arduous three months till book two. This is an ending that will have you anxiously counting down the days but one that you WILL NOT forget. This is a book that will be going on my all-time favourites list and a book that I will be re-reading, even if just for a Royal fix. I cannot wait for July; I need book two…NOW!! I know that this is a trilogy and with book two coming in July and book three in October the wait is not long at all…but we have five brothers…five stories surely…but alas I want six…Callum Royal the silver fox demands a book himself…come on Elle and Jen…be the dealers…gimme the Royal drugs.


“These Royals will ruin you.”
“Maybe I want to be ruined.”


Yes, I do, gimme more…


Social:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1699049607003688 (THE ROYAL PALACE - discussion group)

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