A Prince on Paper by Alyssa Cole
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Picked this up because some of my goodreads buddies read it together and I was looking for a light palate cleanser. I had a hard time liking this and almost dropped it about a hundred pages in. Maybe I should have started with the first of the series.
Too many things rubbed me the wrong way. I found Nya to be annoying and whiny (yes, I am missing her backstory, because I didn‘t start with the first book…). Johan‘s made-up fantasy language was very, very weird. One of the main characters being the Duke of Edinburgh was just plain odd. I kept imagining the 90-odd-year-old husband of Queen Elizabeth II and that really did not work.
However, a synopsis somewhere mentioned a fake engagement—my favourite romance trope—and there were the odd funny moments, so I decided on ignoring odd stuff and to pretend this is a fantasy novel set on an imaginary planet.
The inevitable drama and misunderstanding between the main characters was ok, they were even somewhat adult in their reasoning. Nya definitely became more likable over the course of the book. Lukas‘s crisis felt very stuck-on at the last minute, as if the author wanted to include a popular topic in fiction and didn‘t manage to mesh it well with the rest.
I finished the book, but I am not sold on the series or the author. I did not truly enjoy this, although it had its (rare) moments. If my romance reading buddies hadn‘t liked this so much, I would probably have DNFd this. ★★¾☆☆
Cathy's Reading Bonanza 