Reviewed by phyllish on

4 of 5 stars

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Christmas at the Castle made for a very pleasant afternoon of reading.  The story was very touching.

Kat was abandoned by her parents when she was young, so they could traipse off to Africa to do research.  Though her grandparents loved her and cared for her, she always felt the sting of rejection.  There was a scene in the book where she first interacted with the Queen and was treated as if she was invisible.  The way it was written was very moving.

And then there was Gill.  Once he set aside his prejudices, he was a pretty good guy.  I loved the way he said thank you to Kat for helping his dog.

Included in the story were several great supporting "actors".  I loved Isaac, the server.  And then there were also some perfectly wonderful antagonists and just the simply annoying brother of the groom who added some great dimension to the book.

According to Goodreads, though the name of this series shows up as "Ever After", the two previous books of the series were previously listed as part of a different series.  The Honeymoon Prize was book 3 of Honeymoon and Ever After book 2, The Cinderella Princess was the first book of Royal Holiday.  It looks like Amazon has the series for each of these books set to Ever After.  Either way, this book can be read as a stand-alone book if you prefer.

As a note regarding the "cleanness" of the story, it is completely clean (well, there were some passionate but completely acceptable kisses), but conversations and thoughts of characters that made it clear that they all felt that an intimate relationship outside of marriage is acceptable.  There was not any closed door intimacy in this book.

 This review was originally posted on Among the Reads

Last modified on

Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 26 November, 2017: Finished reading
  • 26 November, 2017: Reviewed