Review: Royal Affair, by Marquita Valentine

I’m going to go with 3.5 stars on this one. Royal Affair was a decent follow-up to Royal Scandal, which I do think you need to read first. Royal Affair is the story of Princess Charlotte and rag journalist Brooks Walker, the reporter who exposed the Sinclaire siblings in Colin’s book, Scandal. Affair is set several years later, and there are a lot of glossed-over plot points that are not explained, but having read Scandal, I knew the background.
I was very interested to see how a no-strings affair between Charlotte and Brooks would work. How could she trust him after what he did to her family? And for Brooks, it was interesting to see him wrestle between keeping he promise he made to Charlotte to keep anything she says to him during their intimate moments private and not use the information for print.

Along the way, the two of course fall in love. But of course there are reasons why the royal wallflower can’t just run off and get married, as much as she wants to be free from her royal chains.

But overall, I just didn’t fall for Brooks and Charlotte as a couple the way I did for Colin and Della. The reader does see a change for the better in Brooks after he gets involved with Charlotte, and in turn his influence on her life allows her to take the opportunity to climb out of her tower when one is presented to her by her siblings. There is a HEA to their tale, and it’s one that I think works well in meshing who they each are and where they were coming from.