A Royal Christmas Wedding by Rachel Hauck(Royal Wedding Series #4)
Genre: Christian fiction, romance
Pages: 240 pages
Publishing Date: October 18, 2015
Synopsis from Goodreads:
It’s been five years since Avery Truitt and Prince Colin of Brighton Kingdom fell in love. But he broke her heart with no explanation.
Fast forward to present day, and Colin is Brighton’s most eligible bachelor now that cousin Stephen has married. When Avery’s father dies of a heart attack, she puts her life on hold and returns home to St. Simons Island, Georgia, to help Mama with the family restaurant. But Mama misses Avery’s sister Susanna, who lives four thousand miles away in Brighton Kingdom—and is expecting her first child. So Mama insists she and Avery spend the Christmas season in Brighton.
Colin and Avery are going to see each other a lot while she’s visiting. But she can’t forget the way he hurt her, and he didn’t expect his feelings to still be so strong.
Avery is torn between considering a future in Brighton and taking a coaching job in Georgia, and Colin is finally pushed to pursue what he really wants. Is it too late to convince Avery that she is his true love? And even if he does, will she make it to the chapel on Christmas Day to give him her heart?
My Thoughts:
I have read the previous three books in Rachel Hauck’s Royal
Wedding Series. I’ll admit, I’m fairly
obsessed with royalty and the idea of fairy tale perfect matches. So when I learned she had a new book in the
series, I requested an ARC from NetGalley.
Unfortunately, I didn’t fall in love with this book. It was, probably, my least favorite of the
series – a couple of which I enjoyed. I
gave it 2 stars (“It was okay.”) on Goodreads but is more of a 1.5 in my
evaluation.
Avery and Colin have a past.
In a whirlwind courtship when Avery was 17, they fell deeply and madly
in love. Then Colin cancelled on
attending her prom and ceased all communication…for five years. Then the holiday season suddenly throws them
back together in daily contact via their respective families. The whole premise is if they rekindle their
love. Which, of course they do. It’s a Christian romance book. So it’s more a question of how they do.
I enjoyed revisiting with Susanna from a previous book. A few other characters make mentions or brief
appearances. But this book definitely
has Avery and Colin as the focus – which is how it should be in this
genre. And they drove me crazy. How adamant Avery was that she was over him
when speaking to others but kept talking to herself about how much she was
still in love with him. How they (Colin
mostly) continued to get into the same situations to cause doubt and
angst.
My angst with the book was how quickly all of it
happened. Granted, Colin and Avery had a
relationship five years previous.
However, five years have passed.
Haven’t they both changed? Don’t
they want to at least sort of get to know who they each are now – especially since
everything that goes wrong Avery assumes Colin is just the same as he’d
been. I would have liked a slower pace
for the romance (re)development.
I did struggle some, too, with knowing who was talking. Many times, I didn’t know who had which lines
of dialogue. That was frustrating. Perhaps it is an issue just with the ebook
copy I had. There were also some
discrepancies in the text. Minor things,
but there nonetheless.
All that being said, this book is still a good read for
those in a mood for ooey gooey emotional romance free of sex. While it didn’t keep me up at night turning
pages, it was still a sweet story most enjoyed by those who like some fluff in
their reading. So probably just perfect
for a Christmas book.
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