Review: PRINCE IN DISGUISE by Stephanie Kate Strohm

Need one more holiday read to dive into this season? PRINCE IN DISGUISE by Stephanie Kate Strohm came out yesterday, and it's one worth running out and grabbing. It was cute. Really, really cute! I'd never heard about the book until very recently, when I stumbled into a social media conversation about how much a few people were enjoying it. I decided to snag an ARC, even though contemporary isn't always my thing--and I'm so glad I did!

There are a lot of tropes throughout PRINCE IN DISGUISE, but they're really fun ones! I never rolled my eyes at anything being overdone or overdramatic, even though things could have spun that way fast. The level was just right, and, honestly? I enjoyed PRINCE IN DISGUISE so much that I ran to look up what else Strohm has written so that I can dive into another book by her very soon!

Set in Scotland over winter break, the novel follows Dylan as she gets swept up into the drama of her older sister Dusty's crazy wedding. Because of course, Dusty being Dusty, she can never do anything halfway. The former Miss Mississippi had entered a reality TV show, never realizing she was about to meet and fall in love with a lord disguised as commonfolk. The two are about to get married, and the Network wants to take its show Prince in Disguise up a notch by televising their wedding. Dylan wants absolutely nothing to do with the show or being in TV, but has no choice in the matter. What fun is going to a foreign country like Scotland when you're surrounded by wedding planning? And why did Dusty have to get married on Christmas when Dylan had off from school and could have been doing all sorts of things at home? Her sentence in Scotland gets a little nicer when she meets a guy named Jamie. But how can she have her first crush with all these cameras centered on her every step?

Jamie is such a fantastic character, and even though he's full of winks and nods designed to hit a reader's fancy and endear him to them...well, it works, so....! There are definitely some tropes at play, but you can't help but swoon whenever Jamie is on the page. And Jamie and Dylan are so adorable and dorky and sweet and awkward together. They're thrown together and trying to explore their friendship---and maybe something more--among a mess of cameras with no privacy to think about things. But whenever these two are together, the story comes alive and the pages flew by.

While PRINCE IN DISGUISE is definitely a "wish fulfillment" style novel, it does its job perfectly, and the result is a book that's absolutely perfect to read this holiday season! It will warm your heart and keep a smile permanently on your face!

PRINCE IN DISGUISE by Stephanie Kate Strohm was published on December 19, 2017 by Disney-Hyperion.

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