Sunny Shelly’s Review: Royal Escape by JJ Knight

I twist the deadbolt and try to open it, but it doesn’t budge. I jerk and shake it, then realize there is another latch that drops into the floor. I bend down and lift it.

The door opens to reveal — another door. But this one doesn’t have a knob. That’s odd.

This door rattles. I press my ear against the wood to listen.

Then suddenly, the door flies open, and I fall onto the floor on the other side!

My face smashes into orange carpet. It smells like an orange, too. I lift my head. “What in thunder?”

There’s a mandarin duvet on the bed. Orange walls, textured to look like the inside of a peel.

Then, right by my cheek, two feet.

Man feet. Square nails.

Pants, no cuffs. The hem lands exactly where it should, custom tailored.

I rise to my hands and knees, shaking off my fall as I lift my head. The pant legs are tapered and crisply ironed. The belt is Italian leather. The shirt is pale green, the cuffs rolled up to reveal strong, tan forearms.

The neck is unbuttoned.

Then I see his face.

Good Lord. He’s gorgeous and blue-eyed with sandy hair. He must be a model, comped a stay by the hotel. I’d comp him anything he asked for.

He stares at me with an odd expression of amusement. “Falling for me already?”

Worst opening line ever.

But yes, yes, I am.

Princess Lilli escapes the royal palace during a royal birth and heads undetected to New York, where she’s living a double life as a social media influencer, lusting after the guy staying in the hotel room next door, and having steamy sex with a masked dude at a charity ball. That pretty much sums up the first few chapters of Royal Escape, and Lilli and Jesse’s story just snowballs from there!

Lilli — as Ellie/Indigo Flame — has a pretty good thing going for a while in New York. She just gets to be an ordinary girl when she’s with Jesse, and she treasures the freedom. I loved that she was able to find her way around Manhattan and fend for herself, and wasn’t this damsel in distress. But eventually, Lilli is discovered by her Pickle in-laws, and her grand escape plan comes to an end when she’s dragged back home in front of mom and dad, aka the King and Queen. But will Lilli and Jesse get their happy ending?

There are a lot of sweet moments between Lilli and Jesse as they get to know one another, and this book was definitely steamier than the other books in the Pickleverse. It’s a lot of fun, a little campy, and captures the zeitgeist with an inside look at the life of a social media influencer. Royal Escape also brings in the cast of characters that we’ve gotten to know — and all of the antics that come along with them.

I received a complimentary copy and voluntarily left a review.