A Queen from the North: A Royal Roses Book by Erin McRae
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Purchased because I needed something fluffy and absorbing, and this did the trick, with authors whose work I have enjoyed before.
So: AU where the Wars of the Roses ( Houses of Lancaster vs. York) resolved differently. This is mostly for political background to raise the stakes of the central romance between Lady Amelia (York) and the Prince of Wales (Lancaster). I knew very little about the original history for this AU, and it was fine– explained well enough to get you through, without getting bogged down.
Come for the AU royal stuff, stay for the epic banter. I actually laughed out loud at a couple of points. One of my favorite parts of this novel is that the dialogue is not only snappy, everyone sounds like plausibly real people, all of whom have multiple modes of speaking depending upon the context in which they find themselves. Which is all the more important when dealing with the whole royalty thing. All of the characters felt like real people, stuck in enormously public roles as an accident of birth, and desperately trying to navigate that while not creating an international incident OR making bad emotional life choices. Okay, WORSE emotional life choices that may turn out okay after all.
Thoroughly enjoyable modern royal romance. Recommended.
Confessions of a Curator, Editor, Geek 