Royal Holiday by Jasmine Guillory // Book Review

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Jasmine Guillory. I love her little stories, but I hate that they’re not twisty and complicated like some of my other favorite romances. Am I being a little bit too demanding when it comes to my romance books?

Royal Holiday follows Maddie, the female MC in The Wedding Party, and her mother, Vivian, to London where Maddie will be dressing the Duchess of Sussex (y’all know who exactly that is) for a bunch of holiday parties and soirees. When Vivian first arrives, she’s greeted with a cup of tea, a warm scone, and Malcolm, the Queen’s private secretary who just so happens to be in town for some work and sipping a little tea as well. Immediately, these two start enjoying each other’s company only to culminate to romance. But when it starts coming time to saying goodbye, will Vivian be able to go back to the States when her heart is in London?

This was such a cute book. It’s got romance and London and food and really made me want to go back to one of my favorite cities. I also loved how easy and mature the relationship between Vivian and Malcolm was. I felt like because the couple was older and have had some life experience, they knew exactly what they wanted so there wasn’t a lot of conflict throughout the story.

And as much as the story was cute and their relationship only fell prey to a few issues, I wanted more. I felt this way with Guillory’s other book The Proposal. While the story was cute and I absolutely love the representation, I was expecting more. I’m always looking for that one big conflict that will make you wonder if it’ll work out. I know that the major one (the fact that they live on opposite ends of the world) is a big one, but that seemed to resolve itself.

It was definitely one of the issues of this book; everything just resolved itself. Any conflict they faced was an issue for half a minute before going back to being this sweet romance. I wanted more and have been looking for more with Jasmine Guillory’s books.

But that isn’t to say this book isn’t good. Guillory is still an exceptional author with a great writing style. I just hope that she’s done writing these Wedding Date series books and will open up to writing something a little more challenging with a lot more heat and conflict in it.

Overall, this is definitely a sweet romance to get you in the Holiday spirit and if you’re a huge London fan, then there’s really nothing to complain about.

• 3/5 Stars
• Find my review on Goodreads
• Find Royal Holiday on Amazon (publishing on October 1st)

I received a copy of this book from Berkley and Netgalley for free in exchange for an honest review. My opinions have not been influenced by the publisher or the author.