REVIEW: The Runaway Princess
May. 3rd, 2016 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThe Runaway Princess: Hester Browne Quercus 2013.
For a good long while, this book did not go the way I expected, influenced by the title and the blurb at the back of the book.
My sense is that Browne knows her London, but seems to be writing for an American audience, this book was first published in the US, contained American spellings and a similar feel to Richard Curtis films at times. There’s a dreamy romance to the central love story.
This is a step up from the plot of The Vintage Girl and somewhat influenced by the much referenced Duchess of Cambridge nee Middleton, surely. Heroine Amy Wilde is a city gardener from Yorkshire living with posh extrovert Jo, who insists on doing things like setting Amy up with men she knows in fancy dress parties. An idiot called Rolf turns up to one of them, causing an incident involving some plants Amy is taking particular care of, which leads to Amy meeting gorgeous and understanding Leo, but by the time that she’s learned that they are both princes, she has spent enough time with Leo to realise that she feels as comfortable as if she’s known him all her life and that there’s a real frisson between them. Very quickly, they’re engaged.
But this means Amy is set to join the modern royal family of a Monaco-esque principality and island. The pressures on someone who is rather shy and definitely has not been brought up to be a princess; the secret about her past that she hasn’t shared with Leo; and what she learns about the way he tends to deal with any problems ratchet the tension about whether the dream will dissipate.
I wanted the other elements to be more exaggerated, perhaps: the fact that Leo’s supermodel/underwear entrepreneur mother is running an Everyday Princesses campaign could have been mined for greater satire and though Rolf and Boris are fitfully amusing they could have been funnier. However, as I’ve always found with Browne, she doesn’t sacrifice character for plot or humour and I do appreciate that. Amy is always sympathetic, even in her naïveté and blank moments, with her obsession about wildflowers and bees.
For a good long while, this book did not go the way I expected, influenced by the title and the blurb at the back of the book.
My sense is that Browne knows her London, but seems to be writing for an American audience, this book was first published in the US, contained American spellings and a similar feel to Richard Curtis films at times. There’s a dreamy romance to the central love story.
This is a step up from the plot of The Vintage Girl and somewhat influenced by the much referenced Duchess of Cambridge nee Middleton, surely. Heroine Amy Wilde is a city gardener from Yorkshire living with posh extrovert Jo, who insists on doing things like setting Amy up with men she knows in fancy dress parties. An idiot called Rolf turns up to one of them, causing an incident involving some plants Amy is taking particular care of, which leads to Amy meeting gorgeous and understanding Leo, but by the time that she’s learned that they are both princes, she has spent enough time with Leo to realise that she feels as comfortable as if she’s known him all her life and that there’s a real frisson between them. Very quickly, they’re engaged.
But this means Amy is set to join the modern royal family of a Monaco-esque principality and island. The pressures on someone who is rather shy and definitely has not been brought up to be a princess; the secret about her past that she hasn’t shared with Leo; and what she learns about the way he tends to deal with any problems ratchet the tension about whether the dream will dissipate.
I wanted the other elements to be more exaggerated, perhaps: the fact that Leo’s supermodel/underwear entrepreneur mother is running an Everyday Princesses campaign could have been mined for greater satire and though Rolf and Boris are fitfully amusing they could have been funnier. However, as I’ve always found with Browne, she doesn’t sacrifice character for plot or humour and I do appreciate that. Amy is always sympathetic, even in her naïveté and blank moments, with her obsession about wildflowers and bees.
