He was my stepbrother.
My Prince Charming.
My fairy tale gone totally wrong…
My mother marrying the king was supposed to give my mom and me our happily ever after. But my life has never been a bedtime story and no prince with a fancy shoe is turning me into a Cinderella.
I had big plans outside of my small but powerful country. But Gunnar, the wicked prince in a gorgeous package, was temptation too strong for me to resist. His sweet lies and sweeter kisses pulled me back into his arms over and over again until his cold cruel heart finally broke mine for good.
Now he’s going to be King and he wants me back in his country, his palace…and his bed.
And we all must bow to the King.
Review:
If it’s been a while since I’ve read a Molly O’Keefe/M. O’Keefe novel, it’s easy to forget how absolutely dark and delicious they can be…and oh, goodness, was My Wicked Prince dark and delicious!
My Wicked Prince is a second chance romance with a forbidden stepsibling aspect to it. Brenna’s also got a good deal of ugly duckling vibe going on, and throw in a whole lot of palace intrigue and backstabbing and you’ve got the general gist of this one.
The bulk of the story is told with flashbacks, with brief glimpses back into the present to get us caught up and speed us on to the HEA. If you’re not a fan of this technique, or of H/h being with others while they’re not together, be warned–this happens here (though not with the one you might expect it to have been…honestly, I didn’t have a problem with it but I know it makes others crazy, so be warned). Their big breakup in the “then” also comes from the hero deciding he knows what’s better for the heroine and going out of his way to shove her away with both hands–even though it tore me apart to read it, Ms. O’Keefe did a decent job of making me believe that the situation around them was so toxic that the other path wouldn’t have worked out well for either Brenna or Gunnar.
And I loved that Brenna didn’t follow the path that Gunnar had decided she should, that she ended up being the strong one and doing what was best for her country and left Gunnar to live with his own consequences for so many years. I can’t help but feel it was 100% what he deserved. 😉 In fact, I would have been ok with her making him do a bit more groveling than he did, but since he wasn’t using their time apart in the totally useless way it first appeared he was, I’ll cut him some slack.
Plus, darn it, I really, really wanted to see them together for real, so there is that.
The teaser at the end for The Tycoon makes it look all kinds of delicious–adding to my TBR right now!
Rating: 4 stars / B+
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.