I enjoyed this fake dating bodyguard/assistant, grumpy/sunshine, steamy British romance between two lonely co-workers. Set up to fake date in order to deflect the press from false assumptions that the prince is dating his personal assistant, Matthius and Petunia (Pet) take one for the team only to find themselves falling hard. Full of fun outings (including a Witch festival) and cameos with Dominic and Sylvie from Battle Royal, this was a solid sequel with delicious spicy open door scenes! Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

I don't want to be too harsh, because this book is..fine? It's also boring. There's zero real conflict between the main couple and a half-hearted mystery that sort of meanders through the plot, popping up to be filler occasionally. I've liked other Lucy Parker books but had to drag myself through this one.

This book was so freaking cute! Having not read Battle Royale, I didn't realise that it was a sequel, and after a few references to the previous story, I was able to settle in to the character dynamics. Pet and Matthias' mutual pining was so sweet, yet funny in the wry way they handled the scandal created by their shared charge's constant high profile faux pas. Their blossoming into romance as they put down their walls and reveal their secrets to one another was so warm yet had lovely moments of silliness that made it so lovely!

3.5 stars- This was an immersive, and at times very emotional story, but it just felt way too long. I preferred the first story, but was glad that Pet got her own story as well. I’m not really into the beauty and the beast aspect, but that did make it kind of unique. I enjoyed the side story about Pet’s father and really felt drawn in and emotional during that part of it. There was something about this story that didn’t quite click with me and I think it’s at least partially because I had a lot of trouble picturing Matthias. I felt like I spent way too much time trying to figure out what he looked like. I almost would have rather the cover show more of his face.
Thank you to NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for providing me access to this eARC for my honest opinion!

Thank you NetGalley and Avon for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

TW: death of parents (past), parental neglect (abuse), parental emotional abuse (past), family tensions, internet bullying, death of a loved one (past, recounted on page), attempted murder (past, on page), PTSD, growing up in foster care system

I would recommend if you're looking for (SPOILERS)

-m/f contemporary romance
-fake dating
-workplace romance
-slooow burn
-opposites attract

This was such a soft and sweet story. Two people who have never really been the main characters, in the orbit of royals, becoming the main characters in their own love story. Pet and Matthias keep popping into each other's orbits, but it takes a fake dating plot to get them to see what was right in front of their faces. Both lonely and not feeling deserving of love in their own ways, finding it in each other.

Steam: 2.75

***ARC Provided by the Publisher via NetGalley***

Looking through the reviews, this was just me but DNF at 21%

I couldn't get into this title. At all. In my opinion it moved so slowly and the wiring kept the characters at such a distance I couldn't ever seem to care about them or anything that happened to them.

I'm unable to recommend this title.

This is the 2nd in the series. I really enjoyed Battle Royal last year. Loved the chemistry between Pet and Matthias. They both were interested but needed this fake relationship push. Oh look paps we need to make out <cough> 😉
The media that covers this royal family just innocent situations into ruinous headlines. They have to keep up pretenses. I love fake relationships when they are both interested and a bit married to their job and also don't think they deserve a relationship. Both have been burned in relationships in the past.
Plus there's a family mystery happening which is interesting.

Read if you like:
🦜 Grumpy sunshine
👑 Royal bodyguard and PA
🐺 Beauty and the Beast
❤️‍🔥 Slow burn
🥸 Fake relationship

Thank you avonbooks for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

Thank you NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for an ARC in exchange of an honest review.

If you're looking for :

- A protective hero,
- Fake Dating,
- Grumpy Sunshine,
- Slow burn.

Then this is the book for you.

I took my time reading this one because Battle Royal is my favorite book by Lucy Parker and Codename charming is the 2nd book in this series. It follows Dominic's sister Pet and the grumpy royal guard Matthias as they need to fake date in order to end a royal rumeur.


I liked this book. It had some tender moments, laugh out loud moments and a lot of swoony scenes. I loved their interactions, how Pet and Matthias share an understanding due to their pasts. How Pet was protective of Matthias as much as he as of her. Everytime Pet realised what she meant to Matthias, how he showed her he cared without really showing off... the little things. I'm sure we all love fake dating for the blurry lines, and boy this one had them. How they can't stay away from each other, can't stop touching even when no one is watching.

This book is definitely a slow burn in my opinion. A bit long in my opinion but worth the read.

When I say that this book is one of the best books i’ve read with the fake dating trope, i mean it! In Codename Charming we follow Pet and Matthias who both work for the royal family. When false claims are being made regarding Pet and their employer, Pet and Matthias begin a fake relationship to drive the attention away.

Petunia De Vere is such a GRAND character. She is the type of person where if you were to meet her no words could describe how much of an amazing person she is. She is so enthusiastic and cares so much for those who surround her. Matthias might appear to be intimidating and mean but in reality he isn’t. As an ex soldier he is very disciplined and serious about the task at hand. Although he doesn’t show it much he’s incredibly caring and loyal to those he holds close.

Pet and Matthias were so similar due to their life experiences. The best way to describe their relationship is by saying that they both didn’t know they needed each other until they found one another. It’s like they both complete this hole in their life that they didn’t know needed to be filled.

There were so many things throughout this book that made me laugh my ass off but there was also very emotional aspects. It was an equal balance of both. Overall I really enjoyed Codename Charming and highly recommend! Can’t wait for more of Lucy Parker’s work.

Thank you to Netgalley, Avon and Harper Voyager for the eARC of this book!

Highlights:
Grumpy/sunshine
Royal bodyguard/Royal PA
Fake relationship
Beauty and the Beast vibes
TW for grief, PTSD, and child neglect

Battle Royal was one of my favorite romances last year, and Codename Charming was one of my most anticipated books. It is a romance between Matthias, a grumpy Royal Bodyguard, and Petunia, a sunny Royal PA. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Matthias and Pet have great chemistry, and I loved their slow-burn sweet romance. Several amusing secondary characters provide great comic relief. And I loved revisiting characters from the previous book, especially Sylvie and Dominic, who remain my favorite.

I have rated this book 3.5 stars.

This book contains some of my favorite tropes: bodyguard, fake dating, & work place romance. I ended up finishing the story within two days. I enjoyed the characters and all of the cute scenes they had together. It made me smile and laugh at some of the situations they got into. Also, I like the connection that they had and they became very protective of each other. It was easy to see why they should be together and how much they cared for one another. Favorite thing about this book is how cute the nickname Button is. I did tear up a little when we got a closer look into Matthias backstory. He is just a big teddybear that needs a hug.

What I think was missing :
-I feel like there were a lot of plots that were happening in the story. I wish we could have had a little more time to explore them.
-The ending did feel kind of rushed and anticlimactic. It needed to be a little more flushed out. I wished we could have seen more with the characters being in a 'real' relationship and not the fake one. I would have also liked to see more from them getting to know each others families.

I have really enjoyed other Lucy Parker books but this one just wasn’t for me. Right from the start it felt so forced and over the top I was pulled out of the story. I can understand Johnny being clumsy or accident prone but can’t understand how he bumps Pet hard enough to send her flying off the stage? And then to learn later in chapter one that it’s happened four times??

I tried to stick with it but unfortunately this one just wasn’t working for me and I decided to DNF. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the free book to review.

Just delightful!

I mean, a grumpy-sunshine/fake relationship/workplace romance already has so much going for it--but when it's also book 2 in the Palace Insiders series? You know it's going to be good!

Codename Charming absolutely did not disappoint. Pet and Matthias's story made me LOL as much as it had be swooning--who can resist a big, burly guy who ends up melting for the teeny little heroine? It's suuuuuper slooooow burn, though, because the denial is strong with these two (the fact that they *had* to be in a relationship for work purposes probably helped slow things down, because it gave them *reasons* to not explore their feelings too deeply), but I promise, it's worth the wait.

The reasons behind Pet and Matthias's being *required* to have a fake relationship for work seem a little iffy--does the palace have an HR department?--we get a further reason much later on. AND of course these two probably weren't going to manage it on their own without some major manipulation anyway, so...

Given where they work and for whom (the Princess's husband Johnny, who not only takes clumsy to a new level, but Matthias also muses at one point "made a bloody Care Bear look cynical and streetwise") there is plenty of fodder for the "com" part of this rom com. But there's a lot of drama here too--Matthias has a tragic backstory, and those who have read Battle Royal already know that Pet's family life wasn't the greatest either. (You can read this one without reading the first book, but why would you? Dominic and Sylvie's story is just as delightful.) It takes a lot for him to believe that he's even lovable in the first place, let alone that *Pet* would find him so, and Pet tried so hard to befriend Matthias when she started working at the palace (to no avail) that she doesn't believe he could possibly want anything real with her either.

Throw in a grumpy cat, a murder parrot, and some truly delightful secondary characters--most of whom are just as committed as the reader is to getting these two to their HEA--and you've got the makings for an absolutely charming story. Pun maybe intended ;)

Rating: 4 1/2 stars / A

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.

This book just didn't work for me. I really wanted it to though, because the concept sounded right up my alley. The romance was also fine. I do think the two main characters had chemistry together, and I liked that they also had a deeper emotional connection. However, I just think this book was so boring. The author just kept describing things a bit too much, and we went on quite a bit of side tangents. I also think the side storylines just were a whole lot of nothing, and also just eye rollingly stupid. Like yeah, I didn't see the twists coming but that's because it was stupid and made no sense. I also think the author kind of forced a lot of "cute" big moments between them, that just made it a bit unrealistic as well. I don't know. The vibes were off with this book for me. It's hard to explain because technically most of this is totally fine, it just didn't work for me. So yeah, I'm kind of dissapointed that this didn't end up working for me because it sounded so good.

Get ready for a budding romance set in Buckingham Palace. Lucy Parker's Codename Charming is a sweet second book in the Palace Insiders series.

Petunia De Vere is the personal assistant of the newest husband of the royal family. Matthias, ex-amry solder, is a stoic bodyguard who will forever be in her debt after saving his assignments life. When a questionable photo of the two get out in the tabloids, fake dating and hijinks ensue. As always Lucy brings readers into a cozy romance with a adorable duo and a supporting cast that makes your heart sing. I would recommend this one to anyone who enjoyed Penny Reid's Knitting in the City Series

This was my second Lucy Parker book, and I was not disappointed.

While this fake relationship story is the second book in the Palace Insiders series, there’s no need to read the first in the series, Battle Royal - although you’d seriously be missing out on an incredible enemies-to-lovers story.

Codename Charming was excellent for Petunia (Pet), the sister to Dominic from Battle Royal. I was so happy for her to have her own story and how it all panned out since she felt like a lost soul in Battle Royal. It felt like she found her footing in this book and quickly became a likable character.

Matthias was another likable character from the start. There was just something about him that made me feel like while he had a hard shell of an exterior, he was just a soft teddy bear inside. I also felt like I sided with Pet when people made snide comments about Matthias’ scars and their height differences.

Notable Mentions:
👑 A clumsy royal
🚪 Some rather interesting predicaments
😻 Another cat appearance (less feisty than the one in Battle Royal)
😂 So many humorous moments
🐭 Many more sweet moments

Codename Charming was a fantastic follow-up to Battle Royal, and I highly recommend this series.

Thank you Lucy Parker, Avon Books, and NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review this book!

Just the cutest sunshine/grump romcom (my two favorite pairings) you could ask for. I couldn't get into the bodyguard/Royal premise that much, but I loved the FMC and MMC so much I could look past it haha.

This story was told in third person dual point of view from Pet and Matthias. It’s the second book in the Palace Insiders series and while you could read it as a stand-alone, there are a lot of characters in common with both books and events that contribute to prior relationships. As a matter of fact, I might have benefitted from a reread before picking this one up because I was rather confused at a few points and that detracted from my enjoyment of this story. It also has inspiration from the Beauty and the Beast theme.

I usually love a book with the bodyguard or fake relationship tropes, and I thought I was going to love this right from the beginning, but then it just stalled. It had moments that I really enjoyed followed by being genuinely confounded. It may have been distraction on my part, but I felt lost in the first half of the book. I felt like I should know more about Pet’s background (or remember more from the previous book) than the information that was given to me in this book. I found Jonny’s incidents to be funny, but they didn’t string together the narrative in a cohesive way for me until the parrot incident. The open nature of Pet’s thought process and the closed nature of Matthias probably contributed to this feeling.

After the angry Scottish-accented parrot, I felt like the communication between Pet and Matthias picked up and my interest piqued. I thought they were both genuinely interesting characters with great backgrounds to explore and find common ground even though physically, they were so different. There were moments where they interacted with supporting characters and other incidents with Jonny that kept the momentum going, though I did have a hiccup during the Wand competition in trying to remember who one of the characters was after having only been mentioned twice in this book though now I remember they were prominent in the first book. I even cried at the resolution of Pet’s quest but wish that I had felt those emotions earlier in the book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Avon Books for a copy provided for an honest review.

The title of the book really fits - it's charming! I liked the forced relationship element, especially as it showed the observant nature of their friends helping them make the connection. There were some lovely poignant passages of Pet and Matthias's backstory that really helped round out their characters. The tender aspect of their relationship appealed to me, and I thought it helped keep the story from being cliche or two-dimensional. And thank you for the epilogue with the happy ending!!! I don't always need to see how things wrap up, but in this case with meeting her real father and later getting married, it was just the perfect way to wrap up the romance!

So why only 3 stars? Partly it's because I struggled with the pacing. Regardless of the author, I have a hard time reading a book where there's SO MUCH internal dialogue between actual spoken moments. I felt like I spent too much time inside their thoughts, when that information could have been conveyed more succinctly in other ways. Also, it got a bit redundant to hear just how stoic and scary and imposing Matthias was and Pet's continual internal thoughts on Matthias.

The story was more open-door romance than I anticipated, and there were some moments of sexual innuendo that seemed a bit surprising? But that could also be a me thing. I definitely felt the realness of their connection and developing relationship, which is what kept me coming back each day to read more!

Have you ever wanted to read a grumpy/sunshine fake-dating romance with a massive size difference, and <i>no</i> monster cock? <i>I’m side-eyeing you, Ali Hazelwood.</i>

Well, look no further!

<i>Codename Charming</i> is the second installment in the <i>Palace Insiders</i> series by Lucy Parker. It follows Pet De Vere, the sister of our beloved MMC from book one, and her leading man, Matthias Vaughn, who is the imposing royal bodyguard of Pet’s employers. As the two are pushed together by the princess in a scheme to fake date after a slanderous rumor emerges in the gutter press, they are thrust into the spotlight and into each other’s arms.

From a distance, this book was adorable. Pet is a sweet truckload of sunshine in the shape of a tiny woman and Matthias is her massive grumpy counterpart, masking his gooey, lovable center with a hard exterior.

But I just couldn’t love this sequel. I think my main issues boil down to two things: the grumpy/sunshine trope was already used, and done better in my opinion, in the first installment; and there was an underwhelming lack of romantic tension despite the fake dating setup.


<b>ISSUE ONE: TROPE EXHAUSTION AND DISAPPOINTMENT</b>

Book one of the <i>Palace Insiders</i> series follows the romance between resident bottle of sunshine, Sylvie Fairchild, and local grump, Dominic De Vere. While there is no fake dating, the two are an unlikely pair that ultimately find common ground in their mutual traumas and grief, revealing that they are more like twin flames than one might imagine at first glance.

Book two follows a similar setup. Pet De Vere is a delightful ray of sunshine and Matthias Vaughn is your typical grumpy, stoic man with a hidden mushy side. While I can always get on board with this kind of trope, it’s awfully jarring to see the same archetypes used back-to-back in the same series written by the same author. The similarities automatically lend themselves to comparison, and that was to the detriment of the couple in this title.

The reason Dom and Sylvie worked so well was because Parker’s fresh take on the grumpy/sunshine trope showed that two people dealing with the traumas of their childhoods can manifest their resilience in different attitudes and defense mechanisms. Ultimately, they are still one and the same: twin flames with emotional baggage that bridges any external gaps with a bond that runs deep.

Parker does this again in <i>Codename Charming</i>, except the same approach feels stale now. This trope and the way she writes it have been exhausted, which is why it just didn’t work for me to see it yet again. I’ve already read this book via its prequel, and the messages conveyed in how that trope was written by Parker were beautiful and heartfelt. If I want to read it again, I’ll pick up <i>Battle Royal</i>. I won’t turn to an inferior copy, which I’m disappointed to say that this constitutes.


<b>ISSUE TWO: A SMOOTH RIDE IS BORING…WHERE WAS THE TENSION?</b>

Picture this: We have a romance with a fake dating plot line and…no tension? It can’t be. Fake dating is a goldmine trope for unlimited oodles of romantic tension. They are quite literally falling for each other under a fake pretense, constantly questioning whether the other person could be feeling the same very real feelings they are experiencing, or if it’s only one-sided. Then comes the natural conclusion of the fake-dating scheme, where it has to be called off and the characters must grapple with the fall out of either playing it cool and making the other person think they don’t reciprocate the attachment, or making a final declaration that could end in rejection.

Like I said, it’s a goldmine for tension in a romantic setting. That is why it’s so universally beloved. I’ve never encountered a book that had fake dating, but not the tension—at least, not until now.

Parker immediately popped the tension balloon by making one fatal error: She had Pet tell Matthias that his attraction toward her is mutual very early on during the fake dating. Sure, no official declarations were made, but once this was done, I knew exactly how things would play out from there. And I was right: Pet and Matthias carried on, playing along with the fake dating in public with a wink and a nudge that it was just “for the cameras”, all the while they both know that their hot and heavy make out sessions are for themselves. Yawn.

The only moment of tension occurred when the fake dating ended and Pet had to make her declaration of love. However, this felt contrived. Why is she questioning his feelings when they both have already communicated that their very real emotions that emerged from a farce are mutual? It was too little, too late and seemed like a last ditch effort to force the tension back into the story in the eleventh hour.


<b>FINAL THOUGHTS</b>

The lack of tension and the trope exhaustion ultimately hampered my enjoyment of this romance.

I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by one thing, though. When Matthias’s ginormous stature kept getting emphasized, I was really worried he would have a gigantic monster cock to match, a la Ali Hazelwood’s mammoth brick-house male love interests and their respective matching peckers. Even hearing Pet’s inner monologue about how Matthias could be too huge for her compounded this. After all, Ali Hazelwood has written FMC after FMC who has stared at her empire-state-building-sized man’s exorbitant schlong with acute trepidation only to be quickly converted into the Colossol Johnson Fan Club™️.

I’m extremely proud to announce that no such conversion exists here. Matthias’s plonker is only slightly bigger than average. <i>Bless you, Lucy Parker.</i>


<b>Audiobook Rating:</b> Anne-Marie Piazza’s accent is pretty strong so I found myself struggling with her voice a bit. My normal speed for audiobooks ranges between 2-2.5x, but I had to listen to this one on 1.8x and found myself rewinding to understand some of the lines. If you’re not a fan of strong accents in audiobooks, I would pass on this one and read the physical book. If that doesn’t matter to you, I would say this was still a fun listen because Piazza’s line deliveries were decent.

🌶️ <b>Spice Rating:</b> 2/5 - one on-the-page l sex scene, without all the cringeworthy sexual lingo

<b>Overall Rating:</b> 3/5

<i>A big thank you to Netgalley and the publishers, Avon and Harper Voyager, for providing me with an advanced copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review!</i>