Cinderella’s Royal Secret

I love this author… she has a way of writing a Harlequin romance that I can’t put down. In this book Izzy has exams and shows up to clean the rooms late when she finds the suite already occupied. Stepping out of the shower is a hot Adonis that demands her services to keep her close. Sparks fly and condoms break. Chemistry in this one is hot and the angst kept low. Four stars of fun!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC to read and offer an opinion. These are always a quick and fun read!

Delightful, low-angst, Sheikh romance

Izzy Campbell is an extremely innocent, 21-year-old, British woman. She is very close to her parents, her paraplegic younger brother, and especially her twin sister. Everyone in her family is loving and loyal to every other member of the family. While studying to become an elementary school teacher, Izzy shares an apartment with her twin sister and supports herself, as well as occasionally sending money to her cash-strapped parents, by working as a maid for an elite cleaning service. While running late from an exam one night, she rushes in well past her allocated time slot to clean a penthouse apartment, which is the most prestigious of her regular assignments. Unfortunately, when she attempts to clean the en suite bathroom connected to the master bedroom, the most gorgeous man she has ever seen is just stepping out of the shower! At first he is very angry at her for invading his privacy, and bawls her out in a foreign language. But after she explains her situation, he calms down. And, instead of calling up her boss and getting her fired, he says he will excuse her embarrassing mistake if she makes it up to him by cooking him lunch. He even offers to pay her extra for doing so. Extremely grateful to both stay out of trouble and earn some badly needed income, Izzy happily accepts. She asks the handsome stranger what she should call him, and he introduces himself as simply, Rafiq, with no last name given.

Crown Prince Rafiq, heir apparent of the fictional Middle Eastern kingdom, Zenara, is a 28-year-old, childless widower who hopes to have one last fling before he must do his royal duty and remarry in order to produce an heir to the throne. His first marriage, which lasted 10 years from the time he was only 16, was very unhappy, and he is greatly dreading marrying again. The tiny, beautiful, adorably unaffected redhead before him seems to be ideal, one-night-stand material. He is more attracted to her than he has ever been to any woman. And after dinner together and a long, friendly chat, Izzy seems quite willing to go to bed with him.

Izzy has never previously had the time or interest to have sex with any man, but it is overwhelmingly clear to her that Rafiq is someone extraordinarily special. Besides being as handsome as a film star, he’s very friendly and attentive. It’s rather overwhelming that he’s obviously someone quite wealthy and important, but other than his initial, justified, tirade at her invading his bathroom, he has not been at all arrogant or entitled in his attitude. She’d be a fool to pass up a chance for her first time to make love to be with an amazing man like this. And she’s certainly prepared for a sexual adventure, because she started the pill a while back just in case the right man came along.

Unfortunately for Izzy, after the most mind-blowing introduction to sex imaginable, Rafiq informs her this is a one-off. And to add injury to insult, he tells her the condom broke! She assures Rafiq she will be all right, because she’s on the pill, only to realize, too late, that a recent round of antibiotics interfered with its effectiveness when she ends up pregnant—with twins! She needs to inform Rafiq immediately that he’s going to be a father, but she has no contact information for him, so with intrepid determination, she sets out to track him down.

Rafiq is not a typical HP, alphahole hero, and is actually quite Beta. Which I personally enjoyed as a nice change of pace in a classic, LG, shotgun-wedding, marriage-of-convenience plot. Izzy is also one of LG’s stronger, assertive heroines, and I liked and admired her very much.

I am happy to report that this is actually a “King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid” fairytale rather than a Cinderella plot because, thank goodness, there is no wicked stepmother or wicked stepsisters. In fact, unusually for LG, there is no female antagonist at all. LG is quite fond, in her more melodramatic romances, of creating female villains in the form of a narcissistic, user mother or sister of the heroine, or a superciliously disapproving mother or sister of the hero, or a jealous Other Woman. Instead, the main romantic conflicts in this book reside almost entirely in the cultural and class differences between the hero and heroine.

As always with LG, the sex scenes in this book are quite sensuous without ever being crude. There is no cheating, and during their separation early in the book, both are celibate.

I look forward to reading the second book in this duology, which stars Izzy’s twin sister. Maya is a beautiful, brainy geek, which is one of my favorite types of heroines. I can’t wait!

I rate this book as follows:

Heroine: 4 stars
Hero: 4 stars
Subcharacters: 4 stars
Romance Plot: 4 stars
Writing: 4 stars
Overall: 4 stars

Note: I received an ARC of this novel from NetGalley and am voluntarily writing a review.