Paper Princess
(The Royals #1)
by Erin Watt
Publisher: Timeout, LLC
Publication date: April 4, 2016
Genre: New Adult Romance
Rating:
From strip clubs and truck stops to southern coast mansions and prep schools, one girl tries to stay true to herself.
These Royals will ruin you…
Ella Harper is a survivor—a pragmatic optimist. She’s spent her whole life moving from town to town with her flighty mother, struggling to make ends meet and believing that someday she’ll climb out of the gutter. After her mother’s death, Ella is truly alone.
Until Callum Royal appears, plucking Ella out of poverty and tossing her into his posh mansion among his five sons who all hate her. Each Royal boy is more magnetic than the last, but none as captivating as Reed Royal, the boy who is determined to send her back to the slums she came from.
Reed doesn’t want her. He says she doesn’t belong with the Royals.
He might be right.
Wealth. Excess. Deception. It’s like nothing Ella has ever experienced, and if she’s going to survive her time in the Royal palace, she’ll need to learn to issue her own Royal decrees.
I was completely wrong about Paper Princess. I honestly thought it was going to be a royal’s story, not a Royal’s story… as in their last name. So, there are no prince’s or princess’s. Just a rich dude who takes in a dirt poor teen and tries to incorporate her into his lifestyle with his five snobby rich-boy sons. Which is not exactly the story I was expecting, but it was still an entertaining read.
I actually got this book from my library and it was classified as Young Adult. Me personally, would not give this book to a young teen. There’s stripping at a strip club, drinking, drugs, attempted rape, and some pretty steamy and quite detailed sexual scenes that I would associate more with a New Adult novel than a YA. So, while the story follows a teen, the things that take place inside the pages are not really appropriate for a younger crowd, in my personal opinion.
Now onto the story. I will admit that I rolled my eyes at Ella… a lot. I mean, she’s this girl who’s at the bare bottom, trying to make ends meet. She’s working three jobs, one of which is stripping, and attending school… and her name is Ella. I was not at all surprised that her stipper name is Cinderella. After all, this story is a “Cinderella story.” I just wish her name wasn’t so cliche. Anyways, not only does Ella go from rags to riches but of course she has to fall for the meanest of the Royal boys. The one who runs the show, the one who says she doesn’t belong and gets pleasure from treating her like scum, the one who belittles her and accuses her of doing everything under the sun, the one who propositions her like a total creeper. Yup, that is the guy that Ella falls for. Ugh! I’m a little sick of the heroine falling for the a-holes who probably grow up to become psychopaths. This isn’t healthy, people. Not sure why authors keep writing about it like it is. To say I was disappointed in a lot of the decisions that Ella makes would be an understatement. For having to grow up and be her own adult at a very young age, you would think that she would be smarter… but she isn’t. She got struck dumb by the pretty boy stick, and it was just a little sad to watch.
However, it pains me to say that I really enjoyed this story. Say, what! I know that’s not where you thought I was going with this. I mean, the characters are cliche, the romance was cringe-worthy, and there really wasn’t anything original to the story… but I still didn’t want to put it down. It was like a 300 page train wreck and I just couldn’t look away. It was like getting a glimpse into the rich people’s world where power is everything, and these kids have been playing the game from a really young age. I was fascinated by the dynamics of it all and while there were some really creepy scenes that were way too inappropriate to be considered normal… even for some rich snob. Yet still, I was glued to their story. So, yeah, I have already put the next two books on hold at the library and I’m itching to start reading them.
Favorite quote…
“Somewhere along the line, I started thinking that if I just got through this bad experience, this bad day, that tomorrow I’d have something better, brighter, newer. I still believe that. I still believe that there’s something good out there for me. I just have to keep going until my time comes.”
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