This book was a great laugh! Nothing like a woman who thinks of everyone but herself until it's (almost) too late. A fun read for sure!

Will was on his way to the royal wedding of his friend Hugo- Prince Alessandro Hugo Giordano who was marrying a Mercedes gray Leomine. . Will was an astronomer, his field truly a game of extrapolation- using ancient evidence to build current theory relying on calculations that pushed against the edges of the range of known values. You had to be part cowboy, part explorer, part decoder idealist, and seer to do well in this field.- something Will had addressed at the Space and Time Forum the night before. He should arrive at the palace just in time for the ceremony to start. There was the lecture on wormholes he was due to give at the University of Amsterdam in a couple of days. The podcast with newyorker.com, the notes from his editor on the second edition of will’s graduate level astronomy textbook due any day. Then there was the virtual reality game set in Orion Nebula for which he was both investor and technical advisor. Reasons enough Will could have skipped this trip. But one reason to go to the wedding was to see his old friend get married. Will had been invited to the palace over a decade before but because of a skiing accident he couldn’t go but his twin sister Claire went alone. Claire should have been marrying the prince. A few weeks later Will’s life had been irrevocably tragically changed and he had lost everything. Also Vallemont became a throbbing bruise on his subconscious every since. This was a chance to put things right. Will’s sight was hindered for a second by a shadow and light dancing across his hands. Will slammed on the breaks and the car skidded to a jarring halt. The engine sputtered and died. Will opened his eyes and in the center of his broad screen stood a woman in a big formal dress that was larger than she was. Black streaked tears ran down her cheeks. Will asked if she was alright and finally she opened her eyes and answered she was stuck. Will pulled her foot out of the mud and offered her a ride which she declined. Will did not do people problems, evidentiary problems as time management had been a problem for Will he still had to get to Hugo’s wedding. Will then realized this woman was Mercedes/Sadie Gray Leonene- Hugo’s future bride and she was going away from the palace not to it. Sadie was determined to make it to the border after crying non-stop for an hour. Sadie had grown up a normal girl in the palace. She thought of her life there before she left at twenty and traveled to N Y. At twenty five she fled from N Y and moved back to the palace. She hadn’t yet thought of the anxious, fractured, out of control mess of the past few weeks. Sadie was a teacher and her students had been twelfth grade drama students who would swoon over the man who had got her out of the mud. When Sadie had become engaged she had been “encouraged” to take a sabbatical from her job. The palace suggested six months to settle into her new role before deciding if she wished to return to work as a teacher. She had imagined a quiet. Intimate ceremony. The legal joining of two friends in a mutually beneficial arrangement that had somehow spiraled out of control. Mercedes had climbed out of a small window in the small antichamber of the palace chapel and ran. Sadie’s mother had been a maid at the palace before Sadie had been born and she hoped running would not be taken out on her mother. The palace had been her mother’s home for nearly thirty years. If they fired her mother for what Sadie had done … Sadie borrowed will’s phone to text her mother to tell her that it wasn’t right for her or Hugo and Sadie couldn’t go through with the wedding. It had taken twenty years for Sadie to agree to marry Hugo who had been her best friend since birth. Sadie knew she needed to get going and agreed to let Will take her to the village. When Will stopped for gas he called Hugo to let him know Sadie was with him. Hugo asked Will to watch over her until he could send someone for Sadie. They went to a hotel and Sadie borrowed a track suit form Will and changed in the car before they went inside to check in. Natalie had worked for Will for seven years- though they had never met- after having been attached to his case by a publicity firm the week his textbook was first published. Finding Natalie tough. keen and pedanter he hired her permanently as his assistant. They worked together over the phone and online. Natalie ran Will’s bookings, planned his travel, and was the gatekeeper between him and his business manager, clients,institutions,conglomerates and governments the world over. Will had several engagements coming up just as he liked it. Sadie finally called Hugo and he asked her to stay with Will until he could find someone to come get her - a bodyguard. The people must really hate Sadie when she heard this. Hugo came to the hotel and told Sadie to go to London with Will and she did and stayed at his home there. They were both feeling something.
I enjoyed this book. It made me chuckle at times. I liked the plot but this did drag for me at times. I felt so bad that Will had been torn from his twin Claire that he had loved so much. Even years later he felt the pain of that loss. I loved how close Hugo and Sadie were even after she ran rather than marry him. Even then Hugo blamed himself for the mess of the aborted wedding. This was a light easy read. I liked Sadie and Will together and how they “ dance” around each other especially since Sadie had been Hugo’s runaway bride but Hugo still wanted her safe and to protect Sadie. I liked the characters and the ins and outs of this book and I recommend.

From the title I was not quite sure what to expect, maybe presumed a princess was escaping an arranged marriage or similar. However, I soon discovered Sadie is the commoner best friend of her prince-groom, and cannot go through with the marriage. I do not know how the author made this work so well, because even as you anticipate the budding relationship between Will and Sadie you cannot help but fall in love with the royal Sadie jilted.

The author managed to write the male main character in a way that humanizes him when he could have easily become a stock character. Sadie even likens Will to a Byronic hero, Mr Rochester, but I think Will is a bit more P&P's Mr Darcy... Even their names match! It is actually the prince I found embodied that literary definition with his many mysterious layers and I cannot wait for his book to be published.

The book wraps up Will and Sadie's story with a pretty bow while giving hints as to what may come next for the prince, which makes you just want more. This novel is exactly what is needed after a stressful week: Light, fluffy, guaranteed HEA.

For the full review, visit my blog "jkbooklover.wordpress.com" on Friday, April 27th 2018.

A nice sweet read with likable characters and a nice HEA.

The clunky and unappealing title of this modern romance (a recent, often annoying trend among category lines) does no justice to what turned out to be the fun, fast-paced tale of a heroine who decides that being a royal princess is not for her, after all, and a workaholic hero who looks up at the stars and down at his computer, but at very little in between--only to find his perfect match quite literally stuck in front of him. There are no bad guys in this story, and no mystery; just very relatable people who ultimately want the best for one another, and allow an unexpected love to flourish. The happily ever after is absolutely lovely.

4 1/2 stars

This was a book that will let you escape to a royal kingdom. It is a story that is a wonderful tale of romance!