The Solstice Prince

This is a very soft, sweet and cute book which was what I wanted - but it's also extremely shallow. Jamie is sweet and broken but not so broken that it ever actually informs anything about his personality beyond the first time he meets Maxim. Maxim is sweet and kind and generous and we never spend one moment of time in his head so even by the end of the book he still seems like an enigma.

The kissing starts very quickly - I prefer a build up, friends to lovers, as they say, but in here they go from strangers to kissing in three meetings. (I think literally, but it's definitely quickly.) Thankfully, the sex comes much, much later, which was about the only thing this book did right for me. There's overblown statements of affection, love and even a marriage proposal all before the end of this short book.

And, speaking of the length, it took me forever to read because there was no driving force in the book. For me to really be interested in a book, I need a hook - something like, will they get together or how will they solve this problem. This book didn't have anything besides a sweet boy meeting a sweet prince and them falling quickly and seamlessly in love. If you like those type of books, I would want to recommend this one to you except for one major issue I had with it that.

If you would switch out all of Jamie's pronouns from he to she and delete two or three brief conversations about same sex relationships...it reads just like an early straight romance novel. I don't usually notice this and I hate drawing this comparison, but so many of Jamie's character notes are stereotypical of romance heroines.

Finally, this book is a romance with slight fantasy flavor. There's hardly any talk about how Jamie's magic actually does anything and there is a completely undescribed (except for color) animal in the story that I still have no idea what it's supposed to look like.