Caitlin Crews’s Prince’s Nine-Month Scandal opens with as ludicrous a premise as we’ve come to expect from the HP romance. In a bathroom at London’s Heathrow, Natalie Monette contemplates leaving her PA job with billionaire Achilles Casilieris after five years of all-consuming dedication to her volatile employer. In the mirror, she espies her twin, or someone who could be her twin. Princess Valentina of the mythical kingdom of Murin is running away from her arranged marriage to Prince Rodolfo of the mythical kingdom of Tessely. What better solution to both their dilemmas than to “switch” places: Natalie off to a princess’s life and Valentina to escape her impending nuptials by serving the mercurial Achilles. They put on each other’s clothes and take each other’s cell phones, with which they agree to text. Valentina pretty much goes off-grid till the romance’s final revelations and Natalie is left with her princess-fantasy in a bit of a shambles. She must navigate her kingly father, royal duties and protocols, and most importantly, devil-may-care, reckless, promiscuous fiancé. But Natalie hasn’t “handled” the temperamental Achilles for five years without learning a thing or two about difficult men. She sets out to set a few things straight with Rodolfo – for Valentina’s sake. She doesn’t count, this is an HP after all, on her visceral physical and emotional response to him.

Neither does Rodolfo to Natalie. Miss Bates supposes that Crews is saying something about when you meet “the one,” even when she looks exactly like the fiancée who left you cold, you’ll recognize her. It’s like fated mates, but with HP glamour. What used to be staid, formal, and politely boring dates are now banter-and-challenge-filled confrontations. There is something different about his fiancée, thinks Rodolfo, and he can’t quite figure out what. After a while, he doesn’t care: all he knows is his response to her is physically and “could it be, given his playboy ways and cold, cold heart?” emotionally explosive.

There is much to enjoy in Crews’s Nine-Month Scandal and yet, still quite a bit that Miss Bates didn’t. Crews is an able, witty, smooth writer and it’s always a pleasure to read her prose. She writes zingy, back-and-forth dialogue that makes a good romance more than its love scenes, by allowing heroine and hero to connect and break apart as they alternately find commonalities and ways to hurt each other. Another reason Miss Bates appreciated Crews’s romance was her clever insertion of the fairy-tale underpinnings to the HP. Crews is aware of the potential for irony and uses it to wink at her reader and the genre. On sundry occasions, Natalie/Valentina and Rodolfo roll their eyes at the Cinderella-trope, or ball-room romance scenes, or the idea that their arranged marriage has fairy-tale trappings, even of them being romance leads. (Crews also has fun with the revelations of secret/true identities à la Shakespeare’s twins, or fairy-tale princesses.)

Until Natalie and Rodolfo are no longer amused. Because romance is about the heart’s engagement and when the heart is committed, things take a serious turn for reader and protagonists. And, even though Miss Bates was reader-engaged at this point, there were things about the narrative that gave her pause and that she couldn’t escape. First and foremost, she found it squirmy that the romance’s heroine spent a narrative three-quarters lying to the hero. As far as betrayals go, it was a doozy and the hero had to have been a douche-bag deserve it. And, what did work was that, initially, he was. Arrogant, promiscuous, addicted to extreme sports, and obnoxious, that was Rodolfo. Except that, unlike Natalie’s back-story for her aversion and fear of falling in love, Rodolfo’s was convincing, compelling, and emotionally viable and sympathy-eliciting. Miss Bates grew to like Rodolfo.

Though Miss Bates was never thoroughly comfortable with Crews’s narrative, she did have one thought about it that makes it interesting and original as far as romance narratives go. Crews flips the “other woman” trope: Natalie is the other woman and the heroine, even if Crews mitigates the implications by having Real Valentina text Natalie her blessing by saying Natalie can do with Rodolfo as she wishes. And yet, Rodolfo is, in the midst of all this, innocent of their adventure, and amazingly gracious about it when all is revealed.

Miss Bates can’t say that she loved The Prince’s Nine-Month Scandal as much as she did Crews’s Bride By Royal Decree, with its more convincing secret-princess plot, but enjoy it she did. Enough to read till quite late, which really is the beauty of the category, isn’t it? Long enough to satisfy and short enough to read in one sitting. In the end, with Miss Austen, Miss Bates deems The Princes’s Nine-Month Scandal “real comfort,” Emma.

Caitlin Crews’s The Prince’s Nine-Month Scandal is published by Harlequin Books. It was released in May 2017 and may be procured from your preferred vendor. Miss Bates received an e-ARC, from Harlequin Books, via Netgalley.

The H is an arrogant jerk for lack of a better word, and the h is just too needy. Nothing about the characters or plot held my attention. The HEA also came too quickly and was not believable.

No review.. publisher informed as to reasons why.

This book was good and I enjoyed it. I liked the storyline and the book was well written. Rodolfo and Natalie had great chemistry and I wish they had been thrown together more. I also wish the story had bounced from what was going on with Valentina and what was going on with Natalie but I guess there'll be a book about Valentina. Al in all it was a good book and I recommend it.

Not a very interesting read. I couldn't bring myself to care about either of the characters.

Quick Summary: I loved the separated at birth concept associated with this book. Unfortunately, the pacing and movement of the story was too slow, and the content was largely unbelievable. Additionally, the book felt unfinished, somehow.
Rating: 2/5
Recommend: +/-
Audience: Adult
Status: Contemporary
Chemistry/Intensity:+/-
Conflict/Drama: +/-
Family Dysfunction: Yes
HEA: Yes

I thoroughly enjoyed this light read romance! It's very much a Parent Trap situation when two strangers meet in the women's bathroom and discover they must be sisters! Both unhappy with where their lives are taking them, they decide to switch places for a month. Should be fun right? Especially since one of them is a princess! Well, it turns out they're both princesses, only their mother lied about one of the twins dying at birth before she got herself out of her marriage to the King!

Stepping into her sister's arranged marriage, pre-wedding life, Natalie is in for a surprise when she discovers she exceedingly attracted to the man her sister is dreading marrying. Turns out Prince Rodolfo is attracted to her too, which he finds baffling since every other meeting they've had has been blase. Things progress quickly when he decides to pursue her and Natalie finds herself falling for this man. Now she just has to figure out what to do when her sister comes back and she must go back to her old life.

I read a lot of books and this book well it was a very original plot that I have not seen in a book before. It really is an adult version of the movie The Parent Trap and well I loved how the author wrote a romantic version of this. Instead of meeting in summer camp the two girls meet in a restroom at the airport and they discover they look alike. They also discover their mom is named Federika/Erica though Valentina has never met her mother, only her father the king. And Natalie only knows her mother and never met her father.

Valentina is a princess and she is very unhappily engaged and she wants to try out a normal life as Natalie. And Natalie wants to escape the boss she is thinking of quitting on, so they trade purses, exchange cell numbers and go into the life of the other.Now this is where the book lost me for a bit. I LOVED the plot. I love the concept of the story but Rodolfo was the weak link. He actually was not very likeable. He is engaged and he lives this playboy life. Even as they plan a wedding. He plans to be faithful only for a short time until he gets an heir. He actually is a weak character and the reason his wedding is fastly approaching is because his father is tired of him wasting his life. It was hard to see him as more than a spoiled, bored prince who lets his father rule him.

But despite that he grew on me and I loved Valentina and Natalie and this very unique plot. It really was a fun story and I loved it.

OMIGOSH what an amazing idea for a duet! Pretty sure I haven't read this plot before and I absolutely love the idea of two people swapping identities - except this time in Book 1 anyway, the hero has no idea!

Loved the adventure of this book and how our heroine and hero pretty much fell in love but all the obstacles in the way of identity swap cropping up. I loved how Rodolfo was described and how Natalie made him question everything he believes in. Flying solo with no idea about being a Princess I loved how Natalie winged it as best she could and I really liked how the plot was dealt with when she was falling in love and how it's explained why Natalie and Valentina look the same.

Such an adventure I was taken on as a reader! Absolutely adored this book.

There was just enough hint regarding Valentina's story to make me go I CANT WAIT!

I hated to give this book only three stars but there was too much introspection on the part of the main characters, especially the heroine. The middle to the end was better. I'm a fan of Catlin Crews and look forward to her books, but sorry to say although the story idea was good, I wish there was more dialogue.

Twin separated at birth. One twin, Natalie is an assistant to a powerful and wealthy business man, Achilles Casilieris. The other twin, Valentina is a princess. The two meet by accident at a private airport bathroom and devise a plan to trade places for 6 weeks. Natalie was thinking of quitting as she has no life working for her demanding boss and thought it would be fun to play a princess. Valentina wants to live a normal life and have some fun before she has to marry prince Rodolfo.

This story line just didn't work. So many holes in it and way out there scenarios that. One example is Rodolfo walks into a room at the palace for his scheduled/routine short meeting with Valentina and finds all of a sudden he's attracted to her and doesn't ever figure out she's different??? That's just a sampling of several issues with the storyline. This so called meeting was about 1/3 of the book and the monologue and dialogue was way too long, as was loosing interest in the story. Also, I don't think the two MC met more then a handful of times from what I can tell in the story but int he end they are in love???

I didn't really care for the hero, he seemed to arrogant and stuck on himself. The heroine was okay, but her issue with her mother and the prince theory was silly and over used in the storyline.

The monologue and inter dialogue was an issue, which seems to be the norm most times with this author. The sneak read I got from Valentina's forth coming story seems more promising, as the hero figures out quickly that "Natalie" isn't really Natalie. So fingers crossed for a better read on the next princess HEA.