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theavidreaderandbibliophile's review against another edition
4.0
Royal by Danielle Steel is a book that drew me in right away. Princess Charlotte is seventeen when she is sent to Yorkshire for her health and safety. The owner’s have a handsome son who is the same age (you see where this is heading). The pair soon find themselves in a compromising situation. A baby ends up being raised by a housekeeper and a stable manager. The secret come to light forever altering people’s lives. Royal has Danielle Steel’s trademark writing style which makes her stories so easy to read. I liked the characters and the storyline. We get to see how family can help loved ones deal with grief and the intensity of love during war which will make people do things they would normally never think of doing. We also learn that it is important to fight for our dreams. There were some emotional moments in Royal that will have you searching for a hanky. Royal is a delightful escapist novel that I enjoyed from beginning to end.
dianashadel's review against another edition
1.0
Not sure why this is getting such good ratings. The story introduces characters just to kill them off and moves on so quickly I didn’t have time to get to know those characters before I’m being carried on by the next. Felt like a reasonably good plot with bad writing.
bargainsleuth's review against another edition
4.0
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When I was in junior high and high school and college, I read a lot of Danielle Steel. After reading so many of them, I thought I could write them because they all seemed so formulaic. So I stopped reading them. (Yet, I continue to enjoy the formulaic Nancy Drew, so go figure). When I saw the title and description of Royal by Danielle Steel, I knew I had to check her out after all these years. A romance story loosely based on the Windsor family? Count me in!
From the publisher: “As the war rages on in the summer of 1943, causing massive destruction and widespread fear, the King and Queen choose to quietly send their youngest daughter, Princess Charlotte, to live with a trusted noble family in the country. Despite her fiery, headstrong nature, the princess’s fragile health poses far too great a risk for her to remain in war-torn London.
Third in line for the throne, seventeen year-old Charlotte reluctantly uses an alias upon her arrival in Yorkshire, her two guardians the only keepers of her true identity. In time, she settles comfortably into a life out of the spotlight, befriending a young evacuee and training with her cherished horse. But no one predicts that in the coming months she will fall deeply in love with her protectors’ son.
She longs for a normal life. Far from her parents, a tragic turn of events leaves an infant orphaned. Alone in the world, that child will be raised in the most humble circumstances by a modest stable manager and his wife. No one, not even she, knows of her lineage. But when a stack of hidden letters comes to light, a secret kept for nearly two decades finally surfaces, and a long lost princess emerges.”
Spoiler alerts!
The weird thing about Royal is that the blurb is only about the first 15-20% of the book. As mentioned in the blurb, an infant, Annie, is orphaned when Charlotte dies from childbirth. Charlotte's husband dies on the front lines, and then the Count and Countess with which she stayed with also die. The Countess never had the time to tell the royal family of the royal marriage and birth, since doing so in a letter could not be a very proper thing to do. Left at the estate are the servants, who did not know of the clandestine marriage of the princess and the count’s son. They think Annie is just one more bastard child born during the war. Another young lady, Lucy, had also been sent to the estate in the country to avoid the bombings in London, and she decides to take the baby and all the documents proving her royal parentage. No one stops her.
She returns home a “war widow” and eventually meets a man who marries her and has children of her own. But she keeps secret the identity of her oldest daughter, Annie. It is only on her deathbed that she reveals to her husband the truth about her daughter’s parentage.
By now, Charlotte’s oldest sister is Queen, and it’s Annie’s stepdad’s job to try and get a message to the queen about her niece. Through ingenuity he does it, and a meeting is arranged. The Queen and Queen Mother are gob-smacked because Annie looks so much like her mother, and they take copies of the documents saved all those years ago to verify her claims. When it is proved true, they welcome Annie into their world.
It’s then that the story starts to drag a little. Annie loves horse racing and is petite enough to be a jockey at a time when there were no female jockeys allowed. I love horse racing and watch the big 4 American races every year, but I just didn’t care about Annie’s career, which is odd, because I normally like stories where women break the glass ceiling. She’s fallen in love, but wants to put her career first for a year, to prove to herself she can compete with the men. Her beloved doesn’t believe her and breaks up with her. But since this is a Danielle Steel novel, you know that true love will prevail in the end.
I thought the story was compelling enough, but in need of a good editor. There’s repetition in paragraphs that got annoying after a while. Twice in one paragraph it is mentioned that “they hadn’t seen each other in a year” and then “it had been a year since they saw one another.” But I imagine it must be hard to be the editor of Danielle Steel books because she’s so uber-successful how can you critique her?
If you like the royals like I do and want a light, frothy romance, give this one a try. Not great literature, to be sure, but that’s to be expected from Steel.
When I was in junior high and high school and college, I read a lot of Danielle Steel. After reading so many of them, I thought I could write them because they all seemed so formulaic. So I stopped reading them. (Yet, I continue to enjoy the formulaic Nancy Drew, so go figure). When I saw the title and description of Royal by Danielle Steel, I knew I had to check her out after all these years. A romance story loosely based on the Windsor family? Count me in!
From the publisher: “As the war rages on in the summer of 1943, causing massive destruction and widespread fear, the King and Queen choose to quietly send their youngest daughter, Princess Charlotte, to live with a trusted noble family in the country. Despite her fiery, headstrong nature, the princess’s fragile health poses far too great a risk for her to remain in war-torn London.
Third in line for the throne, seventeen year-old Charlotte reluctantly uses an alias upon her arrival in Yorkshire, her two guardians the only keepers of her true identity. In time, she settles comfortably into a life out of the spotlight, befriending a young evacuee and training with her cherished horse. But no one predicts that in the coming months she will fall deeply in love with her protectors’ son.
She longs for a normal life. Far from her parents, a tragic turn of events leaves an infant orphaned. Alone in the world, that child will be raised in the most humble circumstances by a modest stable manager and his wife. No one, not even she, knows of her lineage. But when a stack of hidden letters comes to light, a secret kept for nearly two decades finally surfaces, and a long lost princess emerges.”
Spoiler alerts!
The weird thing about Royal is that the blurb is only about the first 15-20% of the book. As mentioned in the blurb, an infant, Annie, is orphaned when Charlotte dies from childbirth. Charlotte's husband dies on the front lines, and then the Count and Countess with which she stayed with also die. The Countess never had the time to tell the royal family of the royal marriage and birth, since doing so in a letter could not be a very proper thing to do. Left at the estate are the servants, who did not know of the clandestine marriage of the princess and the count’s son. They think Annie is just one more bastard child born during the war. Another young lady, Lucy, had also been sent to the estate in the country to avoid the bombings in London, and she decides to take the baby and all the documents proving her royal parentage. No one stops her.
She returns home a “war widow” and eventually meets a man who marries her and has children of her own. But she keeps secret the identity of her oldest daughter, Annie. It is only on her deathbed that she reveals to her husband the truth about her daughter’s parentage.
By now, Charlotte’s oldest sister is Queen, and it’s Annie’s stepdad’s job to try and get a message to the queen about her niece. Through ingenuity he does it, and a meeting is arranged. The Queen and Queen Mother are gob-smacked because Annie looks so much like her mother, and they take copies of the documents saved all those years ago to verify her claims. When it is proved true, they welcome Annie into their world.
It’s then that the story starts to drag a little. Annie loves horse racing and is petite enough to be a jockey at a time when there were no female jockeys allowed. I love horse racing and watch the big 4 American races every year, but I just didn’t care about Annie’s career, which is odd, because I normally like stories where women break the glass ceiling. She’s fallen in love, but wants to put her career first for a year, to prove to herself she can compete with the men. Her beloved doesn’t believe her and breaks up with her. But since this is a Danielle Steel novel, you know that true love will prevail in the end.
I thought the story was compelling enough, but in need of a good editor. There’s repetition in paragraphs that got annoying after a while. Twice in one paragraph it is mentioned that “they hadn’t seen each other in a year” and then “it had been a year since they saw one another.” But I imagine it must be hard to be the editor of Danielle Steel books because she’s so uber-successful how can you critique her?
If you like the royals like I do and want a light, frothy romance, give this one a try. Not great literature, to be sure, but that’s to be expected from Steel.
tabithas's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.5
The storyline was intriguing, but this book was not well written
marinakeysbookshelf's review against another edition
3.0
I have never read a Danielle Steel book before but I have always heard great things. I read some reviews of this book not living up for the other books she wrote, so I think next I will read another one of her books so I can compare.
I was really excited to read about Royals and I am not sure if this book is fact or fiction but it read some reviews of it being fiction but was mostly fact. It does seem that many details are taken right from the real world of the real Royal Family and has no originality to the story.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. I do think it was a little repetitive because it would constantly review things that we already knew, so that annoyed me a little bit. It was also very easy to predict what would happen in the rest of the book, so it took the excitement out of it. Other than that, I liked the story and I guess I now know a little more about the royal family than I did before.
I was really excited to read about Royals and I am not sure if this book is fact or fiction but it read some reviews of it being fiction but was mostly fact. It does seem that many details are taken right from the real world of the real Royal Family and has no originality to the story.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. I do think it was a little repetitive because it would constantly review things that we already knew, so that annoyed me a little bit. It was also very easy to predict what would happen in the rest of the book, so it took the excitement out of it. Other than that, I liked the story and I guess I now know a little more about the royal family than I did before.
jacpytlik's review
3.0
Boring. Characters were bland and really didn’t have that much of an arch. Needed more showing than telling.
christina72's review
3.0
It's been 15+ years since I've read any of her books. Her early books are richer and better than this one. The story seemed really rushed. 25 years in in 288 pages? But It did hold my attention. And that's why I give it 3 stars.
itsybitsydino's review against another edition
DNF'd at 80%.
Very repetitive. Facts and events are rephrased almost always from each point of view and stated too many times. Story is a bit flat in my opinion. There's nothing particularly exciting happening besides an almost natural flow of events from one event to another.
Very repetitive. Facts and events are rephrased almost always from each point of view and stated too many times. Story is a bit flat in my opinion. There's nothing particularly exciting happening besides an almost natural flow of events from one event to another.
kiercarnahan's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
Royal is included with an Audible subscription and it’s about a lost princess and her dream to be a female horse jockey. It was historical fiction about royalty, WWII, horses, mystery, and romance. I enjoyed the narrator and his accent in this and thought the story was good too!
apszczola's review
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
This was the weirdest book I’ve read so far. It was completely in the narrators perspective and had hardly any insight into the characters thoughts or emotions at all. Aside from the mention of “she felt this way” kind of narration, it was bland and boring. I only finished because I don’t want to be a quitter but it was hard. It wasn’t a book I was excited to get back to.