The Royal We by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan

The Royal We by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan
Release Date: April 7, 2015
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Pages: 464
Series: n/a
Review Source: Netgalley

Synopsis: (from Goodreads)

"I might be Cinderella today, but I dread who they'll think I am tomorrow. I guess it depends on what I do next."

American Rebecca Porter was never one for fairy tales. Her twin sister, Lacey, has always been the romantic who fantasized about glamour and royalty, fame and fortune. Yet it's Bex who seeks adventure at Oxford and finds herself living down the hall from Prince Nicholas, Great Britain's future king. And when Bex can't resist falling for Nick, the person behind the prince, it propels her into a world she did not expect to inhabit, under a spotlight she is not prepared to face.

Dating Nick immerses Bex in ritzy society, dazzling ski trips, and dinners at Kensington Palace with him and his charming, troublesome brother, Freddie. But the relationship also comes with unimaginable baggage: hysterical tabloids, Nick's sparkling and far more suitable ex-girlfriends, and a royal family whose private life is much thornier and more tragic than anyone on the outside knows. The pressures are almost too much to bear, as Bex struggles to reconcile the man she loves with the monarch he's fated to become.

Which is how she gets into trouble.

Now, on the eve of the wedding of the century, Bex is faced with whether everything she's sacrificed for love-her career, her home, her family, maybe even herself-will have been for nothing.

My Thoughts:
Oh my word!!!! This book was epically good. It put me through the ringer, made me a complete emotional mess. The Royal We took me from giddy to butterflies in the stomach to anxious to angry to heartbroken to hopeful to happy and everywhere in between. I can honestly say this is the best book I've ever read involving royalty and involving dealing with the press and paparazzi.

What surprised me most about this book is that it has some serious weight to it. Just based on the genre you’d expect a story like this to be on the shorter side, but nope, this is an extremely long book. Despite the length I could not set it down: I just kept reading and reading, which shows you how involved with the book I was.

The Royal We is a linear story with five different sections, set at different times. The story starts with Bex meeting Nick at Oxford and their friendship that becomes more. We see different stages of their courtship and all the aspects that come with that. I loved Bex and Nick together but this book made me question whether being with him was worth it for Bex: the expectations, the judgment, the ceremony, the never having a normal life. This is really the big question of the novel: is it worth giving up so much to be with someone you love? & Can you make it through the horrible and still have something worthwhile left?

This book does such a good job at showing us a royal family that we can easily identify as a version of our own, while equally making the characters different and truly themselves. It has some incredibly amazing secondary characters, some you'll love (Freddie!!! Oh gosh, I could go on and on about Freddie), some you'll loathe (Richard!! aka Evil Prince Dad), and some it's so complicated you're not even sure (Bex’s sister, Lacey). I mean, these characters are totally layered and complicated. Even Richard you can feel a twinge of sympathy for at times, though mostly he's just Prince Dick.

If I had one complaint about this book it would be that I wanted more cute Bex/Nick scenes to make up for the angst and/or a longer ending so we could see people’s reactions and how everything went down (do these things missing mean there'll be a sequel? *optimistic*). However, the way it ended was perfect too. It felt like a very Nick and Bex ending, instead of an ending for HRH and Future Duchess Rebecca.

By now it’s clear that this book made me feel So Many Feelings. I just loved every bit of it, even when I was so tense it made my stomach upset or when tears were continually streaming down my face. This is the first book in a while where I've felt SO strongly about loving it. The Royal We is an AMAZING read, one I would highly recommend to all contemporary romance fans, New Adult fans (after all, this book is truly about growing up and finding yourself, making those tough decisions), and to fans of books about royalty and/or celebs. I honestly can’t recommend this book highly enough.

The Cover:
Amazing!!

Rating:
[5/5]

Purchase Links:
Kobo | Amazon.ca | Amazon.com | Chapters-Indigo | Barnes & Noble

Best Kind of Broken by Chelsea Fine (Review, Excerpt, & Giveaway)

Before You Break by Christina Lee
Release Date: March 4, 2014
Publisher: Forever (Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group)
Pages: 336
Series: Finding Fate #1
Review Source: Netgalley

Synopsis: (from Goodreads)

Sometimes moving on means moving in.

Pixie Marshall wishes every day she could turn back time and fix the past. But she can't. And the damage is done. She's hoping that a summer of free room and board working with her aunt at the Willow Inn will help her forget. Except there's a problem: the resident handyman is none other than Levi Andrews. The handsome quarterback was once her friend-and maybe more--until everything changed in a life-shattering instant. She was hoping to avoid him, possibly forever. Now he's right down the hall and stirring up feelings Pixie thought she'd long buried . . .

Levi can't believe he's living with the one person who holds all his painful memories. More than anything he wants to make things right, but a simple "sorry" won't suffice--not when the tragedy that scarred them was his fault. Levi knows Pixie's better off without him, but every part of him screams to touch her, protect her, wrap her in his arms, and kiss away the pain. Yet even though she's so close, Pixie's heart seems more unreachable than ever. Seeing those stunning green eyes again has made one thing perfectly clear--he can't live without her.

My Thoughts:
Best Kind of Broken is the story of two people with a past relationship who, for some reason, have fallen apart. At first the interactions between Pixie (thankfully a nickname) and Levi are quite immature. It was definitely frustrating to see them treating each other badly, especially once you know the reason why and when you see how close they were in the past. I was frustrated with their interactions at times, but it became clear that both the characters were at a loss, blaming themselves for what happened, and not knowing how to deal with the consequences.

I liked the humour and tone of this book, and I was rooting for the characters to open up to one another and work through their issues together. Unfortunately the book didn’t really stand out from other similar New Adult titles. That disappointed me a bit, because I know from reading her other books that Chelsea Fine can write romance and chemistry that makes your heart ache. Overall, though, I thought this was a good story with great secondary characters.

The Cover:
Like.

Rating:
[3.5/5]

Purchase Links:
Kobo | Amazon.ca | Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble

Praise for Best Kind of Broken:
"By turns humorous and heartbreaking, Best Kind Of Broken has become one of my favorites!"
--- CORA CARMACK, New York Times bestselling author of Losing It

"You'll fall for Pixie and Levi, just like I did!"
--- JENNIFER L. ARMENTROUT (J. Lynn), #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wait For You

"Tangled with friendship, history and heartbreak--not to mention a huge dose of humor--Chelsea Fine's New Adult novel is not to be missed! Beyond an incredibly HOT read, Pixie and Levi's longing for each other will have you rooting for them till the very end."
--- JAY CROWNOVER, New York Times bestselling author of Rule

"This book destroyed me. Tore me into little tiny pieces. But somehow with lots of laughs and some very steamy times, Chelsea put me back together again! Chelsea Fine's style is witty, visceral and fresh. All I wanted to do was crawl inside this book and live with the characters. And now all I want is MORE."
--- CHELSEA M. CAMERON, New York Times bestselling author of My Favorite Mistake

"Sandwiched between laugh out loud moments and some serious heat, Best Kind of Broken is an unforgettable story of loss and forgiveness that will leave your heart aching."
--- LISA DESROCHERS, USA Today bestselling author of A Little Too Far

About the author:
Chelsea lives in Phoenix, Arizona where she spends most of her time writing stories, painting murals, and avoiding housework at all costs. She’s ridiculously bad at doing dishes and claims to be allergic to laundry. Her obsessions include: superheroes, coffee, sleeping-in, and crazy socks. She lives with her husband and two children, who graciously tolerate her inability to resist teenage drama on TV and her complete lack of skill in the kitchen.

Where to find Chelsea:
Website | Facebook | Twitter
YouTube | Instagram | Goodreads

EXCERPT:

Levi is so distracting. His arms are all raised, and his shoulders are all broad, and he’s fixing crap, and it’s just…it’s just…annoying.

With a huff and a puff and some choice words in my head, I grab my sliced bell peppers and force my feet to the stove. I throw the vegetables into a frying pan, grab a wooden spoon, and ignore Levi’s close proximity.

My body hums.

I ignore that too.

I steal a glance in his direction and watch as the corded muscles in his forearm flex as he unscrews something on the fire alarm box. Why does he have so many muscles in his forearm? That can’t be healthy.

I drop my eyes to the frying pan and focus on bell peppers, because bell peppers are interesting and they don’t have backs the size of Alaska or copious amounts of forearm muscles.

The forearm muscles that I’m not thinking about lightly brush my shoulder and the humming inside my body knots together and zips around like a bumblebee on crack.

I casually turn down the heat on the stove, like that’s the reason I’m suddenly a human vibrator, and go back to stirring. Levi goes back to screwing.

Bell peppers.

I’m thinking about bell peppers.

He brushes against me again, except this time his forearm grazes my breast and my body immediately goes wild like I’m some love-starved teenager and the humming dives low in my belly and the stove gets hotter and my breaths get shallow and suddenly bell peppers are the sexiest vegetable on earth.

From the corner of my eye, I catch his Adam’s apple bobbing with a nervous swallow, which can only mean one thing. The boob brush was an accident.

Well crap.

If he had been trying to cop a feel with his Hulkish forearm, I could have responded with some kind of snarky “you’re a pervert” comment. But it wasn’t on purpose and somehow that makes it sexier and now the cracked-out bumblebee is buzzing in my nether regions and my hands are starting to tingle and why the HELL is this stove so hot?

I turn the burner down another notch and take a slow, deep breath. I have a boyfriend. A great boyfriend. So this sexual frustration I feel around Levi is nothing to get my bee-loving panties in a bunch about. I just need to calm down.

Levi lowers his arm for a moment, his eyes still on the alarm, and stretches his neck.

Ah, the neck stretch. The universal sign of stress. Well at least I’m not alone in my frustration. My hot, distracting, pants-are-so-inconvenient frustration.

Wait, what?

Who said anything about pants? I am NOT thinking about pants—or lack thereof. Damn you, bell peppers!

I toss the wooden spoon to the side and move back to the counter where the threat of being turned on by a handyman or, you know, a sautéed vegetable is much less severe.

I bite back a groan. What was I thinking, living under the same roof as Levi? There’s no way I’ll survive the summer.

Hell, I can barely survive breakfast.

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