Despite my reviews taking a long hiatus (sorry for those three years!), I definitely haven’t stopped reading, and I’ve got some really fun reviews planned for those books that I’ve been reading over the last three years! I wanted to start my time back on the blog with this one, though, because I’ve LOVED this series, and I reviewed the first three installments in the series years ago. (See The Wedding Date, The Proposal, and The Wedding Party.) I haven’t finished the series yet, so hopefully those will be coming in the future too! Anyway—on with the review!
In Royal Holiday, Vivian Forest gets to tag along with her daughter Maddie on the trip of a lifetime—to England at Christmastime, so Maddie can style a member of the royal family for their abundance of parties and events surrounding the holidays. Vivian is struck by a lot of things in England—one being the charming private secretary to the Queen, Malcolm, who is as attracted to Vivian as she is to him. After some very formal lunches and a kiss under the mistletoe, it turns into a full-on fling. But with Vivian’s departure date looming, can they figure out what they are to each other?
3 Things I Loved
Vivian and Malcolm. I feel like it isn’t very often that we’re treated to a more mature romance, particularly like this one, where the heroine is the mother to a former romantic lead (Maddie was the heroine in The Wedding Party). And Malcolm was the perfect gentleman, which is pretty much exactly what Vivian deserved in this book. I loved them together.
Maddie! She was so supportive of her mom, which was wonderful to see! And Theo made some cameos as well, which I also loved.
The Meghan Markle vibes. I think what I might have loved the most about this book is a member of the royal family—I think pretty obviously modeled after Meghan Markle—requested to be styled by a black woman, so much so that she flew Maddie to England for the holidays! I loved EVERYTHING about that!
Dislikes/Problematic Content
I don’t recall any obvious problematic content here, but I didn’t love everything about this book, particularly when compared to the earlier books in the series. In light of some of the RACISM that has come out in and about the actual royal family, I really want to believe that a plot like this could occur in real life… but I don’t believe it for a second. So I’m going to stick with my own little lovely fantasy land and say that the problems are squarely in real life.
However… this book was slow. I think it’s a product of the gentlemanly nature of Malcolm and the fact that the main characters are older than we typically see in romances, but it was slow. It took me a month to read this book! A Jasmine Guillory romance! I usually fly through them! So that was a dislike on my part, but it didn’t take away from the romantic magic that Guillory can produce, once the story got going.
My only other small complaint—Malcolm was a little surface-level for a lot of the book. I didn’t feel like I knew much about him! It got better toward the end, but I was having trouble rooting for him in the middle, just because I didn’t understand his motivations for what he was choosing to do and say.
Rating
A reminder of the rating scale:
Red = DNF, I hated everything
Orange = Ugh, no thank you
Yellow = I mean, I’ve read worse, but there were problems
Green = This was good, but not something I’d reread
Blue = Oh my gosh, everyone should be reading this book
Purple = This is the unicorn of books and I will be rereading it until the binding falls apart
I loved this book, and I’m happy that it was part of the series. But it was slow and Malcolm was a little bland in the middle. I’m going to give Royal Holiday a GREEN rating. It was good! But the rest of the series so far has been better!