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A review by kookie9200
Royal by Danielle Steel
2.0
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this title.
During WWII Princess Charlotte is sent to the country by the royal family in order to keep her safe from bombings. Her identity is known only to the elderly couple that own the property she is sent to. Within a year, she falls in love with their son, gets pregnant, marries him, and he is sent off to war. He dies almost immediately, leaving Charlotte to live with her mother in law and Lucy, the other border, who just happened to be obsessed with Henry, the couple's son. Charlotte dies after childbirth, and soon after, the countess dies as well, leaving no one that knows Charlotte's true identity. Lucy decides to raise baby Ann Louise as her own, even after she discovers she is a royal princess by birth.
This book was a lot. Most of it hinges on the kidnapping of a baby. Most of the characters are killed off just for this plot to happen, and it's rather ridiculous. Even if you manage to suspend common sense for long enough to imagine that this could actually happen, the story is trite and predictable. Added to that, this book is so incredibly repetitive that you simply have to roll your eyes. I mean, Steel would repeat sentences nearly verbatim within the same paragraph. If one were to remove all the repetition, this book would MAYBE be 100 pages.
Steel befuddles and frustrates me. One book will be good and then the next is as if she didn't even try. It's almost as though she has a halfway decent idea and a deadline, so she just randomly copy and pastes the same paragraphs over and over around key plot elements to make a whole book. Take this one, for instance. Long lost princess that no one knew about is reintroduced into the royal family. Should be interesting, but it's so overdone and unbelievable that it's hard to stay in the plot.
During WWII Princess Charlotte is sent to the country by the royal family in order to keep her safe from bombings. Her identity is known only to the elderly couple that own the property she is sent to. Within a year, she falls in love with their son, gets pregnant, marries him, and he is sent off to war. He dies almost immediately, leaving Charlotte to live with her mother in law and Lucy, the other border, who just happened to be obsessed with Henry, the couple's son. Charlotte dies after childbirth, and soon after, the countess dies as well, leaving no one that knows Charlotte's true identity. Lucy decides to raise baby Ann Louise as her own, even after she discovers she is a royal princess by birth.
This book was a lot. Most of it hinges on the kidnapping of a baby. Most of the characters are killed off just for this plot to happen, and it's rather ridiculous. Even if you manage to suspend common sense for long enough to imagine that this could actually happen, the story is trite and predictable. Added to that, this book is so incredibly repetitive that you simply have to roll your eyes. I mean, Steel would repeat sentences nearly verbatim within the same paragraph. If one were to remove all the repetition, this book would MAYBE be 100 pages.
Steel befuddles and frustrates me. One book will be good and then the next is as if she didn't even try. It's almost as though she has a halfway decent idea and a deadline, so she just randomly copy and pastes the same paragraphs over and over around key plot elements to make a whole book. Take this one, for instance. Long lost princess that no one knew about is reintroduced into the royal family. Should be interesting, but it's so overdone and unbelievable that it's hard to stay in the plot.