Book Review: Paper Princess (The Royals, #1) by Erin Watt

Title: Paper Princess (The Royals, #1)

Author: Erin Watt

Publisher: Timeout LLC

Pages: 370

Format: E-book

Published: April, 2016

Price: $4.99 -> Rp65.519 (Barnes & Noble NOOK)

Rating: 4 / 5 stars

Date started: August 2, 2016 - Date finished: August 3, 2016

Other books in the series:
Broken Prince (The Royals, #2) by Erin Watt
Twisted Palace (The Royals, #3) by Erin Watt

Synopsis:

From strip clubs and truck stops to southern coast mansions and prep schools, one girl tries to stay true to herself.

These Royals will ruin you…

Ella Harper is a survivor—a pragmatic optimist. She’s spent her whole life moving from town to town with her flighty mother, struggling to make ends meet and believing that someday she’ll climb out of the gutter. After her mother’s death, Ella is truly alone.

Until Callum Royal appears, plucking Ella out of poverty and tossing her into his posh mansion among his five sons who all hate her. Each Royal boy is more magnetic than the last, but none as captivating as Reed Royal, the boy who is determined to send her back to the slums she came from.

Reed doesn’t want her. He says she doesn’t belong with the Royals.

He might be right.

Wealth. Excess. Deception. It’s like nothing Ella has ever experienced, and if she’s going to survive her time in the Royal palace, she’ll need to learn to issue her own Royal decrees.

Review:

Ella is an orphan, her mother is dead and she never knew her father. Ella's been struggling for a living and she's used to it, bouncing from city to city whenever someone's about to find out that she's a minor with no guardian. She does multiple jobs to make ends meet and sometimes she dances in a gentleman's club for an extra easy bucks. One day, at school, someone claims to be Ella's guardian, his name is Callum Royal. Callum is Steve O'Halloran's best friend, and Steve is Ella's biological father. At first, Ella was hesitant to believe Callum but he made Ella an offer she can't refuse.

Callum welcomes Ella into his family, the Royals, where he has five sons, Gideon, Reed, Easton and the twins Sawyer and Sebastian. Ella wasn't greeted with a warm welcome in the Royal's house, in fact the Royal brothers have made it their mission to make Ella's life a living hell. The Royal brothers are convinced that Ella is up to no good. Ella being the scrappy survivor that she is didn't crumble over the shenanigans of the Royal brothers and her peers at her new school, in fact she challenged them.

Over the course of time, between the constant back and forth insults and how terrible they treat each other they're actually starting to warm up to each other, especially with Reed, Ella actually likes him and Reed might like her too despite the hostility he put up on the surface. This could be trouble, because the Royal brothers have skeletons hidden deep inside their closets and getting close with the Royals might mean the risk of corrupting herself.

“This will never by my home. I don’t belong in splendour. I belong in squalor. That’s what I know. It’s what I’m comfortable with, because squalor doesn’t lie to you. It’s not wrapped in a pretty package. It is what it is. This house is an illusion. It’s polished and pretty, but the dream Callum is trying to sell is as flimsy as paper. Nothing stays shiny forever in this world.”

This book was kind of popular a few months or weeks back on Goodreads. I saw a lot of people review this book and I was curious about what this book is all about. If I didn't read it myself I would've pegged this book similar to The Selection series based on the cover itself and the mention of the word "princess" but to my surprise it actually isn't like that at all. This book is a young-adult contemporary romance book and is one of the good ones I must say because oh my lord I read this book in just one day, this book is like crack once you start reading you can't stop until you finish and it leaves you wanting more with its cliffhanger ending.

Let's discuss! The strong aspect of this book is its characters. You see this book has a lot of characters in it but the authors are able to seamlessly differentiate between these characters. My favorite characters are Easton and Val (UGH they are just the best!). Second strong aspect of this book is chemistry build-up between characters. I really like how I can feel the hatred of the Royal brothers toward Ella in this book very clearly and also the familial tie aspect of this book is really really good. How they all stick together and stuff. Beside the hate, I can also feel the romance of this book quite clearly as well. I mean oh my damn! R and E? OTP GOALS.

Somewhere along the line, I started thinking that if I just got through this bad experience, this bad day, that tomorrow I’d have something better, brighter, newer. I still believe that. I still believe that there’s something good out there for me. I just have to keep going until my time comes.

I really don't have anything bad to say about this book because this book is really fun. I had a blast reading this book to the point that if there's any mistake I didn't even notice it, I flew through this book like a man on a mission. The one thing that confuses me though is that this book is young-adult but it has "mature" scenes (if you know what I'm talking about), which is unheard of in YA books as far as I know so this book is kind of bordering on new adult I could say? But the characters are still in high school which means that its supposed to be YA since in new adult books the characters are usually older like in college and such. I dunno, it's just a one big gray area, I don't even care at this point because I ENJOYED THE HECK OUTTA THIS BOOK.

Oh yeah, be prepared for a cliffhanger ending too if you want to read this book. Thankfully the sequel is already published so there won't be any waiting game. People! Read this book now!

That's all for now!