Synopsis:
Sariah Wilson’s Royal Valentine is part of The Improbable Meet-Cute, irresistibly romantic stories about finding love when and where you least expect it. They can be read or listened to in one sitting. Let’s make a date of it.
Valentine’s Day becomes a Roman holiday for a princess in disguise in a dizzyingly romantic short story about making wishes come true by the USA Today bestselling author of The Chemistry of Love.
Princess Ilaria has had it up to her tiara with the paparazzi, her own wild reputation, and the public eye. Trading places with her assistant, Ilaria wants just one blissfully ordinary weekend. Then a handsome photographer with a sexy Scottish burr offers to be her guide. Sparks fly, but how long can they last? Ilaria’s secret has to come out—and it could ruin a perfectly serendipitous romance.
Review:
At this point, I’m not entirely sure why I keep subjecting myself to these audionovellas. Royal Valentine wasn’t outright terrible, but it wasn’t great either. The narrator did a pretty decent job (minus the Scottish accent), the setting was really fun and the hidden indentity plot was interesting but 71 pages isn’t a very long time to make a connection believable.
Honestly, I didn’t think much of this book but “I’m not interested in hearing your explanation that’s designed solely to make you feel better.” does go pretty hard. What a way to shut down someone’s terrible apology.
I also enjoyed this call back to The Exception to the Rule “Although I did spend one year studying abroad at UW–Madison in Wisconsin. I made a good friend there, also named Callum. Callum Sundberg.” He glanced at his phone. “I usually hear from him today. He has a habit of reaching out to friends on Valentine’s Day.”
I liked Callum’s reveal but the way they handled it wasn’t great. It was pretty guessable but I’m not overly critical when a romance book is obvious. I read romance for escapism, I don’t need them to have complex stories. Royal Valentine was pretty fun and I enjoyed exploring with Ilaria and Callum. It would have been interesting to see what was going on with her assistant though. I’m pretty sure pretending to be nobility is a criminal offence. How did no one realise they’d swtiched places, they can’t be that identical.
The constant use of “dinnae ken” was a bit annoying. You’ve already told me he’s Scottish, you don’t need to make him speak like this all the time. I will always hate writing out how the accent sounds. It makes sense for someone who speaks, for example, English as a second language to have slightly broken language skills, but doing it this way is so bad. Also, the narration for the Scottish accent was a little jarring. It would have been far better if they’d got an actual Scottish voice actor to narrate Callum’s dialogue. I will always advocate for romance audiobooks to be narrated in duet, it add so much to the story.
I’d be willing to give this author a second chance as I don’t believe you can truly judge someone’s writing skills on just one novella.
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