From the blurb:

Prince Alexsey Romanovin enjoys his carefree life, flirting—and more—with every lovely lady who crosses his path. But when the interfering Duchess Natasha decides it’s time for her grandson to wed, Alexsey finds himself in Scotland, determined to foil her plans. Brainy, bookish, and bespectacled, Bronwyn Murdoch seems the perfect answer—she isn’t at all to the Duchess’s taste.

Living at the beck and call of her ambitious stepmother and social butterfly stepsisters, Bronwyn has little time for a handsome flirt—no matter how intoxicating his kisses are. After all, no spoiled, arrogant prince would be seriously interested in a firm-minded female like herself. So…wouldn’t it be fun to turn his “game” upside down and prove that an ordinary woman can bring a prince to his knees…

An absolute delight to read – this book gave me a week’s worth of bedtime reading that left me falling asleep with a smile on my face.

The storyline draws from the Cinderella trope in a fun way, but isn’t weighed down by an attempt to faithfully retell the classic fairytale. For a standalone novel, the book has just the right amount of story, I think – plenty of action, but not so much that the author does not make space for great character development.

Alexsey makes for a wonderful prince. I love his self-confidence, his belief that he can just get what he wants when it comes to power and women, and also his humour and affection for his family and friends (and, ultimately, Bronwyn) which soften his character. Bronwyn is a brilliant heroine: smart, independent and strong, the kind of woman who’s undeterred by being locked in a room and simply climbs out of a window and down a tree. The secondary characters are also colourful and likeable; I especially enjoyed a second love story interwoven in the plot, and the machinations of Bronwyn’s prickly-but-not evil stepmother and Alexsey’s gypsy grandmother, Natasha.

The writing style is wonderful: witty and warm, and so easy to read. My favourite element of the book is the author’s incorporation of quotes from another (fictional) book, The Black Duke – a melodramatic romance novel that Bronwyn is reading. Cleverly, the author juxtaposes the story of The Black Dukewith that of The Prince Who Loved Me, which makes for a sometimes funny, sometimes poignant comparison. In doing so she helps the reader who is reading this romance novel to connect to Bronwyn, who is also reading a romance novel. The layering of the stories is fun, original and clever, and made this book really stand out to me as a treasure in the genre.

I eagerly await the next book in the Oxenburg Princes series.

The Prince Who Love Me is available now from Amazon; click on the book cover below to visit the store.