Jasmine Guillory is the New York Times bestselling author of five romance novels, including The Wedding Date and The Proposal. Her work has appeared in Real Simple, Cosmopolitan, and O, The Oprah Magazine. She lives in Oakland, California. You can find her at at jasmineguillory.com. You can find more of my reviews of Jasmine's works here.
Vivian Forest has been out of the country a grand total of one time, so when she gets the chance to tag along on her daughter Maddie's work trip to England to style a royal family member, she can't refuse. She's excited to spend the holidays taking in the magnificent British sights, but what she doesn't expect is to become instantly attracted to a certain Private Secretary, his charming accent, and his unyielding formality. Malcom Hudson has worked for the Queen for years and has never given a personal, private tour—until now. He is intrigued by Vivian the moment he meets her and finds himself making excuses just to spend time with her. When flirtatious banter turns into a kiss under the mistletoe, things snowball into a full-on fling. With a ticking timer on their holiday romance, they are completely fine with ending their store, steamy affair come New Year's Day . . . or are they?
Vivian Forest might not be your typical Jasmine Guillory romance novel heroine, and that's exactly what makes Royal Holiday so special. Rather than younger women, the star of this novel is the single mother of a grown women, whose story we tracked in The Wedding Party, the third of Jasmine's novels. I absolutely loved that Guillory took this route with her fourth novel—she makes a statement here (as she truly does with all of her novels, but this one especially) that everyone is deserving of love—no matter the age. As Vivian is an older heroine, Guillory gets to incorporate more interesting and adult tensions—she gets to explore Vivian's past as a single mother, her present with a very established job and situation, and her future as her daughter grows up and Vivian finally gets to go after what she wants. Guillory did a good job of introducing all of these tensions, and incorporating them into Vivian's character.
Like I mentioned before, Vivian is an older woman with a grown daughter, means that our romantic interest parallels her—Malcom is an older man with a college-aged nephew, an established job, and a home he loves. Getting to watch Malcolm grow across the course of the novel was especially rewarding, and, along with Vivian's narration, helped readers see that even older people are still people and not perfect. This was especially true when we watched Malcolm's relationship with his nephew, and it's a lesson I love seeing incorporated into fiction. Malcolm's and Vivian's romance followed a pretty typical romance-novel set-up (the meet cute, the burst of passion/fling, the fight(s), and eventually the getting together officially), and Guillory was able to make that feel special by leaning into both of our main characters' situations as adults with completely different backgrounds. I enjoyed reading this book to see how Guillory paced the romance—I believe it was well-paced, which made even the craziest kind of romance (a two-week fling in the UK to three months of overseas communication to love) seem believable.
Guillory's trademark alternating POVs is present in this novel, meaning we get to see both Vivian's and Malcolm's perspectives on the action of the novel. This allows for her to develop both characters more fully for the readers, and also adds a level of tension that would be nonexistent had we not been able to see into both of their minds. It also has the added bonus of being able to include more conflicts; for example, the fight between Malcom and his nephew, Miles, would have felt so distant from us had we not been able to witness the fight, the fallout, and the ripple effect it had on Vivian. However, while these elements of Guillory's writing remained strong, I felt that there were more instances of telling (and not showing) than Guilloy's other works. Thus, the writing felt choppier, and just not as fizzy or sweet as her other works. This writing style could be a reflection of the fact that this is a romance between an older couple, which would definitely make sense! And it doesn't make the story itself any less enjoyable, but it could just be something she decided to do to gear towards an older audience.
Lastly, I felt like there were some unresolved tensions in the novel. One of the first included Vivian's sister Jo, who was recovering from cancer. Vivian's bigger concerns on going to London were related to her sister, in that she didn't want to leave her sister behind in case something happened. I wished Guillory had developed this a little more—what was it like having a relative with cancer, and how has that changed her world view/routine? What happened to the sister at the end—was she still doing well, or had she relapsed? Jo had a great potential to be a bigger part of the story, and she sadly wasn't. It made me wonder if maybe Guillory was setting up a future novel surrounding Jo and her love life, potentially, but I just wasn't sure. Secondly, Maddie went to London to help dress the Duchess—the Duchess! Did her career improve or her clientele increase after that? I wish we could have seen a little bit into the aftereffects of the trip on Maddie's life as well, which would have been easy to implement, seeing as how close Maddie and Vivian are. These were not make-or-break unresolved points, but I feel like they could have added overall to the story in a way that better represented an adult life.
I am very much looking forward to reading the next few novels in Jasmine Guillory's The Wedding Date series! The next up is Party of Two, but until then, you can find my reviews of her previous novels (The Wedding Date, The Proposal and The Wedding Party) here!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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