Paper Princess by Erin Watt

Series: Royals
# of Pages: 370
Publication: April 4th, 2016
Source: Library Copy
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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.

This was not by any means the best book in the world. It's what I like to call a guilty pleasure or my favorite trashy romance. Before reading this book I heard my fair share of complaints from people who absolutely hated the book. However, I personally love to read controversial books and figure out what elements make people hate them so much. For this book, I saw a lot of complaints about the relationship between Ella and Reed. It's labeled as being abusive and sexist and quite frankly based on Reed's behavior it does take on that nature. I didn't find anything about his relationship with Ella to be romantic. He was a complete jerk to her UNTIL certain elements of their relationship change. That by no means addresses or excuses the nastiness that came with his personality; however, for some reason I still enjoyed the book. I can't necessarily pin point what it was. It could have been anything from how easy it was to read it to the drama that the Royal family constantly encountered. And let me tell you, Erin Watt knows how to write a good cliffhanger. As I'm writing this review, I have already made it through the first three books of the series and plan to start the fourth one sometime soon.

There really isn't anything positive to write about this first book. There's a lot of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. There are addiction issues that are not addressed, foul language used with people who do not deserve it, women who are looked down upon because they're women. It's a tragedy of a storyline and pretty crappy writing, BUT I freaking love this series! Like I stated earlier, I can not pinpoint why I really like the series except the fact that I genuinely enjoy a good trashy romance every now and then. I would definitely say that this book is not for everybody. And it is problematic to the point that it could bother anyone; however, while I saw the issues I still finished the book and instantly picked up the second one.

If you look at the rating below and then read the narrative that I just wrote, you're probably confused as to why the book was rated so low. Regardless of my enjoyment of the book, I cannot in good faith recommend such a problematic book. This does not mean that no one should read it; however, it does mean that I can't give it a high rating. Additionally, I don't think that this book is young adult. If anything I would classify it as new adult. The sex scenes are too explicit for it to be classified as young adult. Overall, not a great book; however, I definitely have made it into my guilty, trashy pleasure.