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REVIEW: The Royal Deal by D. G. Driver

The Royal Deal Book Cover The Royal Deal
Chasing the Romantics #1
D. G. Driver
Fairy Tale
January 16, 2018
E-ARC
63
The Author
January 18 - 21, 2018

A pampered princess is told she must marry a prince she doesn't like, let alone love, on her nineteenth birthday. Desperate to find a way to stop this arranged marriage, she makes a bargain with her father. If she can survive for three months in the forest with no help of any kind and return healthy and unharmed, then she can choose the man she will marry. The King accepts the wager, knowing he can't possibly lose. Princess Faith knows she must win this deal, but once she ventures into the forest, she has no idea how she can possibly succeed.

Review

I’m a huge fan of D. G. Driver’s, so when she asked me to read and review her latest release, The Royal Deal, I gladly accepted.

This book isn’t quite like her others. For one, it’s a short novella. And secondly, it’s written as a traditional fairy tale, similar in style to Gail Carson Levine’s The Princess Tales.

I loved the concept of this fairy tale. Pampered princess doesn’t want to marry the prince she sees as irresponsible. She wants to marry his older brother, the prince who is responsible and devoted to his people. The prince who has also been missing since the last battle he fought in.

So Princess Faith makes a deal with her father to let her stay in the woods for three months, if she survives on her own she’ll get to marry whomever she desires. Should she return home, having failed, before the end of the three months, she will marry the young prince.

I loved that Princess Faith believes so highly of herself as an independent and self-sufficient person, but as soon as she enters the woods she learns she’s actually entirely unprepared. Even when a hermit living in the woods comes to her aid, she runs away, refusing to back down and accept help, thus negating the deal.

Faith’s stubbornness and belief in good were a delight. Even though she basically had zero chance of surviving on her own in the woods, she still made the deal to get out of the marriage she didn’t want.

The hermit was an interesting character as well. I don’t want to spoil his story, so I wont say much, just that as a reader I understood the moral/lesson the author meant for me to takeaway right away and liked it.

Unfortunately, I can’t give this 5 stars because there were so many more details I wanted to know! Novella’s are often tough for me, especially in fantasy (as fairy tales are) because they don’t give the details I crave. Everything moves so fast. BUT – this is my personal preference. If you shoved this story into a book of classic fairy tales I wouldn’t question it being there. Not for a second.

So ultimately, if you enjoy classic style fairy tales this could be a winner for you.


Quotes

Prince Jaeger of Aronsite had asked Faith’s father for her hand in marriage. Her father, the King of Devonedge, accepted. When he joyously told Faith the news the night before in front of a banquet full of people, Faith very calmly stood and replied, “I would rather be boiled alive in a vat of lava than marry that sniveling rodent that calls himself a man.”

“You haven’t any skills to survive. This is a wager you can’t possibly win.”
“Still,” she came back, “I’m willing to make it. I’m that against marrying Jaeger and ever hopeful that those three months will bring Mikhail home.”

Failure. Hopeless. Pathetic. Fool.
This mantra looped around and around Faith’s brain…

“Nothing in stories is ever completely accurate for everyone. Nor are stories ever entirely inaccurate about a great number of people.”

Yes, she could marry whomever she wished, but that didn’t mean she would. It didn’t mean she’d give up her nobility to be with a man who lived in the middle of the forest. Marrying for love was not how the world worked for princesses.

 


My (Writing) Life

Oh what to write, what to write!

I suppose, first of all I should apologize for going MIA for a while here. I’ll explain below.

But FIRST I should let everyone know that PEACE IN FLAMES is now available for preorder – WOOHOO!
If you’re in KU you’ll be able to read for FREE beginning Feb 16, 2018 OR you can preorder now and show your love.

In other news I’m nearing the end of my current draft of SUMMER OF PEACE. I anticipate getting this to my editor by early next week, then going through it again using text to speech. (Amazing what your eyes will skip over! Listening is key for proofing!)

If you’re a fellow reviewer and have any interest in reading/reviewing either/both PEACE IN FLAMES (YA Contemporary Romance) and/or SUMMER OF PEACE (NA – clean – Contemporary Romance) shoot me a message. I’d love help spreading the word about my book babies.

So to expand upon what I said above, I recently had about a week of deep depression and didn’t write or blog or really do anything. It was awful. Even reading brought me no joy and felt like a chore. Zero words were written and I second guessed everything I’d written to date. But I made it through to the other side and I’m looking forward to catching up posting my reviews here and diving back into my writing projects. My contemporary YA romance, tentatively titled SOMETHING I’M GOOD AT, is calling to me.

We also had a massive snowstorm four days ago. The roads were absolutely terrible and I was so grateful I didn’t have to leave the house. Unfortunately the schools did not let out early enough and I ended up with my kids school bus stuck in front of my driveway. It had spun around so it actually looked like it had pulled OUT of my driveway instead of like it had tried to drive past. But let me tell you, Minnesota Nice is a real thing because my feeble attempts to help dig the tires out with my snow shovel were met with the assistance of a neighbor across the street with his snowblower. When the bus got stuck again, he was right back out there helping the driver out by clearing more snow. It was a combination of awful/hilarious/amazing to see all of this happening.

And now I need to get ready for a busy night at work. #hotellife