kaylabeck

Review originally posted on Bibliophilia, Please.

Last year I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing The Wild Princess by Mary Hart Perry. It was an enjoyable read that left me eager to read Perry's other novels about the Victorian princesses. When I was given the opportunity to review Seducing the Princess, I jumped at it.

As a history major, I've read a good bit about Queen Victoria and her family, but I always found her immediate family to be a bit dull. (Seriously, how can you compete with the craziness and drama of the Middle Ages?) Perry's first novel piqued my interest in the family, and Seducing the Princess did not disappoint. Princess Beatrice, known to her family as "Baby", seems to be stuck in her situation of being the eternal companion of her mother Queen Victoria. She soon finds herself with two suitors, Prince Henry of Battenberg and Gregory MacAlister, a minor Scottish nobleman sent by Wilhelm II of Germany. It was not until after I finished the novel that I realized the historical accuracy (with some fictionalization for effect, of course) of the novel, as I am not familiar with the details of Victoria and her children's personal lives.

As for the story in Seducing the Princess itself, I was very pleased. I connected to Beatrice almost immediately. As the oldest unmarried female in my family and still living at home, I definitely understood how she felt. She was nowhere near as clumsy, ignorant, or dull as she was perceived to be, and I felt just as frustrated as her when she was treated as such. Her suitors, Henry and Gregory, were just as compelling in their own ways. Henry truly cared about Beatrice, and that was made evident from the beginning. On the other hand, Gregory was a nasty villain that I enjoyed detesting. He did a lot of really awful things, the least of which being spying and attempting to seduce Princess Beatrice. There was a lot of drama, but it only served to make the book extremely difficult to put down. I may have used Wikipedia to cheat and see what happened with Beatrice near the beginning of the novel, but it did not lessen my enjoyment.

Overall, I found Seducing the Princess to be just as good as The Wild Princess, and Mary Hart Perry is now one of the historical romantic fiction authors that I will automatically read when I see her work. I recommend this novel to any reader of the genre, and I am looking forward to Perry's next book about Queen Victoria's daughters.

To satisfy FTC guidelines, I am disclosing that I received an ecopy of the book from the publisher or author via Innovative Online Book Tours in exchange for an honest review. It has in no way affected the outcome. All opinions expressed are rambling, honest, and completely my own.