Book Review: The Trouble with Princesses

The Trouble with Princesses (A Princess Brides Romance)by Tracy Anne WarrenSignet Select, 2013 Tracy Anne Warren concludes her "Princess Brides" trilogy (after The Princess and the Peer and Her Highness and the Highlander) with the fullest and is some ways most satisfying volume of the three, The Trouble with Princesses, although like the previous two books, it requires a rather more vigorous suspension of disbelief than even most romance novels usually do. This latest romp centers on the audacity that has grown out of the boredom felt by Princess Ariadne of Nordenbourg, which in 1820 has become "a nation that now existed only in memory and history books." She finds herself in England surrounded by the ton, and after six London seasons she's so exasperated she decides on a radical course of action: she'll no longer seek a husband - she'll instead seek a lover.It'll mean utter social ruin, her friend Emma excitedly tells her, but the Princess is adamant:

"I not only plan to be notorious but the most notorious woman in all of the modern world. Madame de Pompadour will become but a cipher when compared to me.""Madame de Pompadour was a common harlot who wormed her way into a king's bed and thus into a position of power. She wasn't royal. She was not a born princess like you."Ariadne waved a dismissive hand. "Have you not yet learned, Emma, that it is not who we are born, but what we make of ourselves that matters most? Everyone remembers and admires Madame de Pompadour, regardless of her origins. I plan to be remembered as well."

Her plan brings her into contact with Rupert Whyte, the notorious "the bachelor prince" (said to be envied by the newly-ascended King George IV for his social notoriety) who engages almost immediately in the kind of jaunty badinage that's only a generation late for the Regency model:

"Love is not an impossible thing." [he challenges her]"If you believe that, then why have you given up on finding it?""Who says I have given up?""If you had not," he said darkly, "you wouldn't be seeking a lover."

Such sparring leads exactly where readers would expect it to, written with Warren's considerably verve:

Ariadne closed her eyes and let herself fall, tumbling down into the dark, sensual depths of his kiss. he breathed him in - starch and spice and clean, healthy male. He tasted like wine and sin, his lips firm but smooth, almost silken. And warm, deliciously so.

Most of the aforementioned suspension of disbelief is most necessary early on, and a good deal of it is needed just to scrape up some sympathy for Princess Ariadne herself, whose willfulness too often comes across as not only shrill but, on one heading, off-puttingly callous:

If there was one thing that gave her pause about her plan to take a lover, it was the fear that she might find herself with child. An out-of-wedlock pregnancy would be a serious complication indeed, but from what she'd read and gleaned from a few carefully worded questions to Emma and Mercedes, there were methods that could be used to minimize the risk - herbal concoctions and timing and such. Not that either of her friends bothered with such precautions, since they were far too happily married and didn't mind the prospect of increasing the size of their families. But for her, a baby would equal the complete destruction of her reputation - not that she particularly cared about preserving it. Still, while there might be hope of hiding an illicit affair, there would be no concealing a pregnancy and the addition of a child into her life.

These slightly more abrasive undertones almost always work to make the book more interesting rather than less, and this must surely be attributable to Warren's skills as a storyteller. Those skills are also on ample display in her treatment of her many secondary characters and her fine ear for dialogue, and you can see those skills in the little teaser chapter of her next book, cheerfully titled The Bedding Proposal. I'll certainly be there for it.