How to Find a Princess
Ratings5
Average rating2.4
15
Ratings5
Average rating2.4
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Alyssa Cole’s second Runaway Royals novel is a queer Anastasia retelling, featuring a long-lost princess who finds love with the female investigator tasked with tracking her down.
Makeda Hicks has lost her job and her girlfriend in one fell swoop. The last thing she’s in the mood for is to rehash the story of her grandmother’s infamous summer fling with a runaway prince from Ibarania, or the investigator from the World Federation of Monarchies tasked with searching for Ibarania’s missing heir.
Yet when Beznaria Chetchevaliere crashes into her life, the sleek and sexy investigator exudes exactly the kind of chaos that organized and efficient Makeda finds irresistible, even if Bez is determined to drag her into a world of royal duty Makeda wants nothing to do with.
When a threat to her grandmother’s livelihood pushes Makeda to agree to return to Ibarania, Bez takes her on a transatlantic adventure with a crew of lovable weirdos, a fake marriage, and one-bed hijinks on the high seas. When they finally make it to Ibarania, they realize there’s more at stake than just cash and crown, and Makeda must learn what it means to fight for what she desires and not what she feels bound to by duty.
Featured Series
2 primary booksRunaway Royals is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 2020 with contributions by Alyssa Cole.
Reviews with the most likes.
Finishing this for bingo reasons, but it's like 85% of the book and they just now got to the made-up country that Makeda is possibly princess of. I don't mind a slow burn but the pacing here was bizarre, with most of the time spent on a cargo ship and a ton of interchangeable characters (except the dude that's clearly setup for a third book in this series). This just absolutely did not click for me and I would probably have DNFed under non-bingo circumstances.
Adding after finishing this one: woof. The pacing is even more bizarre once they get to Ibarania, with a completely out of left field resolution to the princess/inheritance situation, and absolutely no denouement or even an epilogue. Just really weird and by far my least favorite Alyssa Cole.
(2022 Summer Romance Bingo: takes place in made-up country.)
Two really great characters in Bez and Makeda–loved seen an ADHD love interest in Bez and how she moved through the world with her particularness, and Makeda's journey to serve herself before serving literally everybody else was super relatable.
The ending came like a bat out of hell, though–from where? How? Like, it was set up in a small way, but the pacing and the amount of time dedicated to it vs. the rest of the book gave me whiplash.
Would recommend to others just to see Bez and Makeda's characters unfold, but with a warning.
I had such high hopes for this one but it just didn't work for me. :(
Very very veryyyy slow burn and a lot of internal thoughts/growth.
