Honestly, after the wring-my-heart-and-hang-it-out-to-dry of Grey’s The Glittering Hour, I needed a good quick HEA-fix and where better to find it than between the HP’s covers. A Crews too, who better than her ability to write intense drama plus banter and characters who capture you with their humanity. Alas, it was not to be. Secrets Of His Forbidden Cinderella was better in concept than execution.

I’m not terribly proud that I’m a sucker for the accidental pregnancy romance narrative, but I am. It’s not so much the pregnancy part I like, but the protagonists working things out for something more important, more precious, and way more vulnerable than their sorry selves. Inevitably, in the HP’s tropish-constraints, the heroine is seemingly the weaker of the two. Often of humble means, she tiptoes through the tulips of her new-found state with the altruistic idea to do what’s best and what’s fair. The hero, on the other hand, treats the pregnancy revelation with mistrust in regards to the heroine’s motivations, but with a medieval possessiveness for his “heir”.

Crews’s Forbidden Cinderella ran true to form. Four months before the start of the romance proper, American Amelia Ransom dyed her hair, donned coloured contact lenses, and crashed her former stepbrother’s, the 19th Duke of Marinceli’s, Teo de Luz’s, annual masquerade. One thing led to another, yada yada, and voilà, she stands before the suspicious, coldly supercilious, mistrustful Teo, knocked up, but armed with the moral righteousness to do the right thing, tell him about his future son/daughter and return to San Francisco to “enjoy the rest of [her] pregnancy and prepare for life as a single mother.”

Teo has contempt for Amelia because REASONS. Amelia’s gold-digging mother had been married to Teo’s father and ruined him after she divorced him. A larger-than-life beauty with a penchant for collecting rich husbands: how far, after all, can the apple fall from the mother-tree? Entrapment, greed, the besmirching of the ducal bloodline with American peasantry: Teo throws everything at Amelia, but insists, after the paternity test, they marry so he can bring up his son as the next duke. To follow, with at-best muddy logic, Teo brings Amelia to a mountain cabin and compels her, at four and a half months pregnant, to act as his maid unless she agrees to share his bed. So, blackmail, indentured servitude, and an indifference to a woman’s well-being when she’s at her most vulnerable: way to go HP-hero. Now, ole Amelia doesn’t help matters: she enjoys the domesticity, which includes sleeping on an uncomfortable couch, starting the morning fires, and making his Duke-Ship his morning java.

Inevitably, Amelia sees through the arrogance and lack of manners to the vulnerable man beneath the ducal assholery. But lest we give up on Amelia as an abject doormat and move on to the next volume on the Kindle, she shows some spine, nay, in true HP-romance-fashion, she shows CHIN! Instead of slamming the ducal door to the ducal dick, Amelia WILL marry him, WILL love him, and WILL hope he will some day love her back. Is that a crack in the ducal armor? Why, yes, why it is: Teo begins to show signs of humanity instead of smoldering anger and cool contempt.

Normally, I’m all for the HP-WTF-ery, I can take the most outlandish tropish delivery IF the author conveys it with a certain authenticity, nay, delight in its zaniness. Crews can do this, usually with a combination of great banter and emotionally engaging characters. Her strength is in the dialogue’s sharpness and wit. In Cinderella‘s case, however, she traded dialogue for exposition and it didn’t do her any favours: her characters fall flat, banter is infrequent and fleeting. I didn’t care about, or for Amelia and Teo and I was never immersed in the pure romance fantasy the HP offers to the hungry reader-heart. Sadly, Crews’s Forbidden Cinderella “had a high claim to forbearance,” Emma, and I made my way to its baby-filled epilogue if only to see it through.

Caitlin Crews’s Secrets of His Forbidden Cinderella is published by Harlequin Books. It was released in December 2019 and may be found at your preferred vendors. I received an e-galley from Harlequin Books, via Netgalley.

Amelia was at the Duke of Mareneli’s home in Spain. She was Tao-the Duke- stepsister at one time. She had to see him, she had come all the way from San francisco but the butler wouldn’t let her past the door. Of all her mother's husbands noone had impressed themselves on Amelia as had Luis Calvo-Teo’s father. If Amelia could turn back the clock and make this all go away, she would. But wishing didn’t change the facts. Amelia thought the butler would slam the door in her face. A part of her hoped he would. Because surely if she’d gone to the trouble to fly herself to Spain, turn up on his doorstep and try to tell him that was enough. Above and beyond the call of duty. Really she could only do so much. It wasn’t her fault the man the man chose to barricade himself away like this. The butler finally let Amelia in and teo asked her to leave than she told him she was pregnant with his child. Amelia said she wanted him to sign away his parental rights. Teo said he wanted a paternity test. If somehow the child was his he would relinquish nothing. He demanded she reenacted that night at the Masquerade ball. She had forgotten his effect on her. It was insulting he considered himself so far above her that he could openly disparage her. Amelia thought she really might break into pieces, right here on his fancy ducal rug, if she backed down from this challenge. Teo told Amelia he would send his business manager with two members of his legal team come to her. Than Teo was told the test was positive Amelia’s child was his.
I loved this book. I loved that Amelia stood on her own two feet and felt it was her duty to tell Tao he was to become a father. I absolutely loved the last part of the book where Tao’s feelings come through and he is totally opposite the way he feels and treats Amelia. His love comes through. I love how strong Amelia was how she acted his servant in the cabin until she finally gave in to her desire to be in Taos bed. I love that we see Amelia’s and Tao’s relationship grow and change it wasn’t just all of a sudden. I really enjoyed the pace and plot. I loved when Tao realized how wrong he had been about Amelia. I loved the characters and the ins and outs of this book and I highly recommend this book.

Secrets of His Forbidden Cinderella Caitlin Crews is the story of Teo and Amelia.
Teo dislikes Amelia's family because her mother married his father which he considers her mother a gold digger which extended to her. But their parents later divorced but Amelia always crushed on Teo. Now a few years later Amelia thinks to hide who she is to get close to Teo to work through her feelings for him but it backfires.
Enjoyed their story.

This is a short book that provides the quintessential romance, drama, problems, and sexual attraction. She was his step sister many years ago as a teenager. Her attraction never went away. She can not find passion with any other man so she sets on a journey to relieve her lust for him. He wants nothing to do with her or her "gold digging" mother. A costume ball and a hot red dress and mask may turn their world upside down.

As a child, Cinderella was my favorite fairy tale; as an adult, I'm a fan of Caitlin Crews' novels, so when offered a chance to read and review an advanced reader copy of this book, I accepted with a big smile on my face. However, after reading it in one sitting, until 6:00 a.m., the bottom line is that I'm now in a love/hate relationship with this book and its hero (hated him) and its heroine (loved her), which is why I'm settling for a rating of 3 stars--stuck in the middle.

Ten years earlier, Amelia's mother, Marie French, notorious for her many marriages and divorces to wealthy men, met and married the widowed Duke of Marinceli, the 18th such Duke, lording it over his unbroken bloodlines' massive estate in the Spanish countryside, to the consternation of his only son, Teo, the one who will inherit his father's title when his father dies. He's been groomed to do so, and is proud of his lineage, making it obvious that he fiercely loathed his father's choice of bride, and his new stepsister, 16-year-old Amelia. During the few years the marriage lasted, Teo basically ignored his stepsister, and when the marriage ended in divorce, Teo, of course, blamed it on the notorious gold-digging, commoner/whore his father married. When they left the estate, he never gave them another thought, aside from blaming his father's downward spiral, subsequent ill-fated marriages, and eventual death on Marie Force.

Ten years later, Amelia is now 26, still a virgin, and still has feelings for Teo. Each fall, the Marinceli estate hosts an exclusive masked masquerade ball, and Amelia dyes her hair red, wears colored contact lenses to disguise her violet eyes, buys the most revealing gown she can find, and sneaks onto to the estate. Her plan is to exorcise Teo from her heart, attract his attention by flirting with him, and end up having two sexual encounters with Teo, losing her virginity, and then fleeing into the night. Although he used protection, when Amelia finds herself pregnant 18 weeks later, she feels obligated to let Teo know, in person, that she's carrying his child, and that she wants nothing more from him than his signature on a legal document forfeiting his parental rights to their child. What's wrong with this picture? Teo.

When Amelia arrives at the mansion to deliver her news, she nearly has to fight her way past an obnoxious butler, but eventually Teo agrees to see her. To say that his attitude toward her is frosty is putting it mildly. He's utterly cold, obnoxious, self-absorbed, and incredibly rude to Amelia, and when she tells him the purpose of her visit, he assumes she's a gold-digging commoner who wants his money, her mother's child to the core. Of course, he insists on a paternity test, and when the results are in, finally has to believe that Amelia was the mystery women he had a passionate encounter with months ago.

Now, knowing that Amelia is carrying his firstborn heir, he insists they marry, so his child can bear his name, be raised to be the 20th Duke of Marinceli, and he doesn't quite care that Amelia wants nothing more to do with him, his feelings of superiority, or his scorn and cold demeanor. Amelia wants to return to her home in San Francisco, and what does Teo do? He whisks her off to a rustic cabin on a mountaintop in the Pyrenees, where he treats her like a scullery maid and worse, planning to keep her there until she agrees to marry him, and his obnoxious, rude, entitled behavior made him quite possibly the most hateful hero I've ever encountered in a romance novel. He couldn't be less like the Prince Charming in Cinderella if he tried, and in fact, Amelia soon tells him that he's no Duke Charming. He also tells her that he will stop treating her as his servant when she agrees to marry him, at which point she can stop sleeping on the couch and share his bed. What an honor (where's my sarcasm font?) He simply cannot comprehend the fact that Amelia, despite his dim view of her and her mother, would rather act as his maid than become his wife. So, what happens to this ill-matched couple? Sorry, I don't do spoilers.

While Ms. Crews is an excellent and talented author, and her descriptions of the estate and mansion were stellar, I believe she erred in making Teo too unlikable, too stuffy, too rude, too unfeeling, too hateful, too privileged, and too full of himself for him to ever fully redeem himself to this reader. I sincerely wish that Ms. Crews had made him a little less pompous than she did. I did like the fact that she gave her heroine a backbone and some smarts, but the expected HEA ending was simply too little, too late to truly be believable. If you're a fan of fairy tale romances, I predict that you'll either react as I did, or fall in love with this well-written novel, but sadly, loving this novel while hating the hero was impossible for this reader.

As previously stated, I read an advance reader copy of this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.

I so enjoyed this love story.

The character development and the story line was perfect.

Amelia's mother married the Duke of Marinceli, and he was one of several husbands. Teo was Amelia's stepbrother and she's always been fascinated and a little in love with him. But Teo disliked Amelia's mother very much as she was considered a gold digger. And that dislike extended to Amelia. Well Amelia and Teo's parents divorced.

Year's later Amelia came up with a plan to exercise Teo from her mind and heart. She couldn't seem to get far with any of her dates so she decided on a plan to get him out of her system.

She attended a masquerade that Teo's family threw every year. She dyed her hair and wore contacts that changed her eye color disguised as someone else (she was fearful because she thought he would continue to show his dislike for her and didn't want to chance rejection). Well they instantly connected and of course their chemistry and attraction ended in them having sex. She slipped away with him supposedly not know who she was.

Amelia becomes pregnant and arrives at his home to let him know he is going to be a father. The two have a lot of history. Teo hasn't ever really resolved his issue with her mother and Amelia senses his animosity towards her. But after he bombshell he determines that they will marry, but Amilia isn't so convinced.

Teo takes her to a remote cabin to convince her and also to prove a point that she's kinda after the position and money. But Amelia knows the really Teo and she teaches him some home truths as well.

The story from that point is so sweet, as Amelia slowy proves to Teo that man he presents to the world is so much more then this Duke. Teo comes across during the beginning of the story as this stuck up snob and that Amelia is beneath him. But you sense that there's more to this persona and that Amelia knows it. And she sees the real person behind the Duke. And Teo realizes that Amelia's love will endure forever.

I do love the last quarter of the book. So sweet and romantic and emotionally heart felt. The character development for both characters is excellent and pacing of the story well done. And the epilogue is absolutely beautiful, a total ten in my book.

It was a fairly take of an HP.

This book was awful, Teo the nineteenth Duke of marinelli had the charm of a gnat. Amelia was a little better in the fact she had more emotions and a sense of humor. She wasn’t exactly a doormat but not far from it. Together these two people were boring and had zero chemistry. There were chapters upon chapters of internal dialogue that did nothing to move the story in any direction. The way this story is written you feel nothing for these two because the story is told in internal thoughts from Amelia. I was speed reading through Kindle at the speed of light. I couldn’t wait to be done with this book. Can’t and won’t recommend this book.

Overall, I enjoyed this Harlequin Presents novel featuring Spanish Duke, Teo, and intrepid heroine, Amelia, who travels to Spain to inform him that she’s pregnant for him after a one night stand. However with Teo hating her family, he’s not taking the news well, not that Amelia cares that much because she’s strong and has tried to make her own way in the world despite her upbringing.

I liked that this novel had a strong heroine with some agency. Yes, it’s not the most feminist of premises or executions with the way Teo and Amelia got together, but Amelia does put up some resistance and isn’t crushed by his initial resistance. I also really enjoyed this novel’s examination of love and what it takes to sustain it in a realistic way. I like how rather than a surface happily ever after or just a lust-based relationship, Teo and Amelia grew to really see each other and understand each other and acknowledge their faults in dealing with each other in this book. My only downside with this was that sometimes it felt a little unevenly written. I felt sometimes like the transitions were a little abrupt, which might be related to the editing for length.

However, this is one of the most gorgeously honest examinations of love and what it takes to sustain in I’ve read in a Harlequin Presents novel and I did enjoy it and I’d rate it 2.5-3 stars!

I have been longtime Caitlin Crewes fan. For that reason I was so onboard for Secrets of His Forbidden Cinderella. It was sexy and addicting and I was here for Teo and Amelia's chemistry.

I loved how unapproachable and stoic Teo was. There is nothing I love more than opposites attract stories. Amelia was sassy, strong and determined and met Teo barb for barb. I loved it so much! I would have loved to see more of a grovel from Teo and more of Amelia's life in San Francisco but for a short story this was a quick and delicious read.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book for an honest review. 4 stars! ~Ratula