To Ensnare a Prince: An Entwined Prince and the Pauper Retelling

Four Kingdoms Fairy Tale Novellas #1

by Melanie Cellier

How hard can it be to catch a prince?

After being punished for her brother's treachery, Natalie knows the only way to secure her future is to become a queen. And that means marrying the only available crown prince. While she’s never met Prince Leo, she doesn’t doubt herself—after all, she’s already helped bring down a despotic ruler. How hard could it be to catch a single prince?

When her royal traveling companion suggests they switch places before meeting Leo, it seems the perfect opportunity to catch the prince’s attention. If she arrives in Lanover as a princess already, it will only be one small step to become one for real.

But the situation soon veers off track. Being a royal isn’t the answer Natalie thought it would be, and Prince Leo’s cousin won’t stop interfering in Natalie’s plans. The troublesome Prince Luca is bad enough, but when someone threatens the real princess, Natalie can’t walk away from her fake role. Trapped in the wrong identity, Natalie is forced to rethink all her plans—including what it really means to find happily ever after.

To Ensnare a Prince is a novella of approximately 35,000 words.

If you enjoy clean romance, adventure, and intrigue, then try the Four Kingdoms Fairy Tale Novellas now! To Ensnare a Prince can be read on its own or as a companion with To Entangle a Heart—which tells the parallel story of the princess who takes on the role of a commoner.

Genres: Romance, Fantasy, Fairy Tales, Young Adult, Audiobook, Clean Romance, Fiction

170 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 26, 2025

About the author

Melanie Cellier grew up on a staple diet of books, books and more books. And although she got older, she never stopped loving children’s and young adult novels.
 She always wanted to write one herself, but it took three careers and three different continents before she actually managed it. 


She now feels incredibly fortunate to spend her time writing from her home in Adelaide, Australia where she keeps an eye out for koalas in her backyard. Her staple diet hasn’t changed much, although she’s added choc mint Rooibos tea and Chicken Crimpies to the list.


She writes young adult fantasy including her Spoken Mage series, and her Four Kingdoms and Beyond the Four Kingdoms series which are made up of linked stand-alone stories that retell classic fairy tales.

Reviews

[Lindsey (Books for Christian Girls) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars ⭐️ Clean Fiction - Fairytale Retelling

Goodness, I remembered basically nothing about these characters or prior events in the series, which made reading this novella a bit challenging. So for those it’s been a while since you’ve read the original series too, here’s what I gathered:

* Leo is the son of Fredrick and Evangeline/“Evie” from “The Princess Search”.
* Luca is his cousin and the son of Cassian and Tillara/“Tillie” a side couple from the second series (I can’t remember which one).
* Natalie was in the duology series as an important side character.
* Rose is the daughter of Maximilian/“Max” and Alyssa from “The Princess Companion” and also the sister of Henry/Harry from the duology.

I honestly don’t remember by thoughts on Natalie from the prior books, but I found her annoying in this one. Her reasoning for wanting to marry the crown prince were…weak and self-centered to say the least. She was overbearing and even a brat at times.

I never realized how close the main premise of “The Prince(ss) and the Pauper” was to “The Goose Girl” until I read this book. The main difference being that instead one half of the party being forced against their will like in “The Goose Girl”, both parties are willing to swap in this tale. However, Natalie values her own wants and interests above keeping her word to Rose. It took until the very end for me to like her thanks to some much-needed realization on her part, so unfortunately I didn’t like this book as much as I was anticipating. I’m much more interested in the next novella that is taking place at the same time because it sounds better with a princess hiding her princess identity. I’m putting this one at 3 stars, but I do think that’s a little generous for all the scenes that Natalie made me want to bang my head into a wall. However, I’m dealing with a cold/allergies, so I know my grace-giving meter is a little low right now. 🤷🏻‍♀️




Main Content-
A few mentions of a talking cat from the Palace of Light (from the third series); A mention of an enchanted object.



Being attacked/grabbed and threatened at knife-point (up to a few sentences); Seeing someone held at sword-point.

A few mentions of curses (said, not written); Some eye rolling.

Natalie is upset that her parents have kept her out of court despite her helping save the day in the prior duology; Natalie and Rose switch places/identities & Natalie feels guilty at times for their deception.

Mentions of a possible/near murder, possible assassination, a knife being used to threaten someone, threats, & blackmail; Mentions of crimes & a banishment; Mentions of stealing & thieves; Mentions of deception; A couple mentions of rumors; A mention of hatred;




2 hand kisses,
2 kisses lasting a couple sentences,
1 kiss lasting a few sentences,
Remembering a kiss (up to a couple sentences).

Touches, Dancing, Warmth, Goosebumps/Tingles, Nearness, & Noticing (up to a few sentences); Winks & Flirting.

Mentions of a kiss, kissing, & wanting to kiss; A couple mentions of flirting & winks.

[Ranger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a cute read, but it was too short. There was so much more that could have been done with this book. I was on edge most of the book because I was worried there wouldn’t be enough pages to do the story justice, and, while the conflict was resolved, ultimately the books had too few details. This book specifically needed more development between the MMC and FMC because of the expectation and hope built in the duology for the FMC to end up with a different person than she does. However, all of that said, it was a pretty good book that I would recommend.

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

I immediately disliked Natalie. She sounded like a boastful, impulsive teenager... and that was pretty much about right through the whole book.
1: decides she's going to be a queen.. so she won't get left out ever again. So mature.
2: decides she's going to be a queen/princess, but does absolutely zero research on what it's really like. She's constantly being surprised by stupid stuff she should've noticed like that the princess has no privacy or that the princess is too busy to eat during a ball or that the princess can't hang out the window of a carriage.
3: immediately makes a poor impression by treating the other neighboring prince like dirt (despite telling rose there were no other princes), and why can't she go after secondary prince if he's one also?
4: continues to be a total bitch to secondary prince every time they turn around and pursues the first prince in exactly the way the true princess doesn't want to be seen: for title only.
5: the ONE thing rose tells her is to immediately pass along any correspondence she gets so she doesn't scare up and start a war. Guess what natalie DOESN'T DO?!?
6: after nearly causing an international incident, she figures it's time to swap back. Sure sure, just tell the whole country you've already met as the prices that you're actually not. Yet another thing she doesn't think through.

[Kessa Turnbull · Rating 3 out of 5]

How thick can you be?

Melanie Cellier is normally one of my absolute favorite authors. This protagonist just fell flat for me, though. In her first appearance, she was still headstrong, stubborn, and impulsive, but most of all, she was SMART. All her intelligence seems to have leaked away in this book. I understand feeling overly constrained by parents who are more cautious than you. (At least in theory, after reading SO many versions, even if it's the opposite of my own upbringing.) But young people are idiots, and those who want to buck the trend, need to be aware of their natural idiocy and fight to do better if they want to be taken seriously. Natalie doesn't seem to have been aware of that at all. So it was just disappointing. That doesn't make me less of a fan, though, and I'm still just as excited for the next part.

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kisses only

This is part of a retelling of the prince and the pauper. We get the paupers side but it doesn’t resolve all the way. I found Natalie to be quite annoying and very mercenary. She also is a bit foolish and is rude to Luca

[Chelsea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adorable Novella

That was a fun, quick read. I can’t wait until next month to read Rose’s perspective! It has been a long time since I read about Leo and Luca, but now I’ve got the itch to return and reread earlier Four Kingdoms stories…

[Sandralena Hanley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Cellier's books, but I couldn't stand nasty Natalie. She's so self centered, and rude to Prince Luca. I don't understand how he could be attracted to her.

Her owning up to her faults was too rushed at the end. It didn't erase the meanness she showed throughout the story.

I know from reviews that I'll like the second book better. Everyone writes Rose is sweet but determined not to be a doormat. That is self respect, not self centered.

[Laura Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Been reading these books for years and was really excited to be back in this world

[Johanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh I dislike her immensely

[Hadassah Buie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Natalie was an annoying main character. There were many times I wanted to tell her to think about others, and not just herself. Luca was fine, pretty much the stereotypical boring love interest in a fairytale retelling. I wasn't expecting to love this book, but I have high hopes for Roses POV and story.

[Fifi’s Bookshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading a Four Kingdoms book feels like coming home. I just cannot accept that there might not be more after Rose’s story. That would mean never coming home again and Ive already read the series all the way through 3 times 🥺 There’s still so much of this world to explore, maybe even more new lands beyond? The best book series/book world in the world. Four kingdoms is peak.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

My personal review based on my personal feelings, and not meant to be a commentary on the story, the writing, or whatever. I suspect this story will appeal to a lot of people. I didn’t and don’t think there’s anything wrong with it or with the writing. It just wasn’t for me. The idea of using the Prince and the Pauper (which I’ve never read, but did read about, and which isn’t a fairy tale and was not intended to be one) for a duology retelling is a clever one, and one I think Cellier mostly pulls off in that I suspect each story does stand completely alone and you can read either first and not be spoiled for the other. It’s not perfect, in that Natalie and Rose interact very little once they set their initial plan into motion, and I had to suspend disbelief around that several times, trusting and expecting that there would be reason for Rose’s silence and lack of attempts to contact Natalie or to follow through on the original plan to trade places for only a couple days as the time stretches into weeks in the second novella.

I entertained myself for a little while speculating whether Leo and Luca had also switched places. Once I resolved that question in my mind, I found aspects of the story that frustrated me harder to set aside. A lot of them related to the fact that Natalie and Rose switched places and are as a consequence, lying to everyone around them. I nearly always have trouble with plots based on lies, I think because lying makes me personally so uncomfortable. It’s hard for me to relax into the story when I’m anticipating the eventual fallout. The fact that Natalia found her hands tied by the role she was in, and felt she couldn’t fully trust the few people she might have turned to for support led to her being rather isolated throughout.

I am so much older than any of these characters, or for that matter, than the intended audience for this story. And now that I think about it a bit more, it frustrated me throughout how badly everyone behaved. Rose and Natalie switching places and lying to everyone is a violation of trust. But Leo and Luca’s actions aren’t much better. Leo is incredibly rude, and Luca helps him. I guess I found the entire setup for these stories to be about young people acting immaturely. It made it hard for me to get fully immersed or invested. I did like that Natalie realizes fairly quickly that being royalty sin’s always correlated with being able to do whatever she wants.

Also, to be fair, I may have been hindered a bit by not having read the preceding duology about the “mountain kingdom”. I put that in quotes because that fact that even the kingdom’s native citizens don’t have a name for it beyond “the mountain kingdom” pulled me way out of the story. If people believe they are the only people in the world they may name themselves their language equivalent of “the people. So, if the kingdom was cut off and in isolation for long enough to have lost its name, I can see them calling themselves “the kingdom”…but “mountain” is a qualifier, indicating they need to distinguish their kingdom from at least one other kingdom, and all the other countries in this world have names. Why not this kingdom? Perhaps that is explained in the books I didn’t read. But it did pull me out of this story.

Not sure if I want to read the companion to this or not. The completionist in me sort of does. But if I’m being honest, I’m mildly interested in whatever creates the plot (beyond the character switch) in the other novella, since it would need to be separate from the plot of this story, but it seems like it might be related. And in what conversation the main characters of that story have after Natalie reveals the truth of the switched identities. And that’s about it.

[bluerose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew going in that this was a set of two novellas with a dual POV, a clean romance retelling of The Prince and the Pauper but with a princess and a female servant. Shorter, sweet, and a nice comfort read. I paired audio and print.

RMCWR:

I remember this main character from the previous duology.

So the British pronunciation of Lila is..."Lee-luh"?? Not Lye-luh? (This is why you pair print with audio because...what?)

For some reason the idea of never tasting an orange until you are fourteen just made me sad.

Oh honey. If this was a Georgette Heyer book, you would be told you are being foolish beyond permission.

....with six minutes left to the audiobook this is going to end on a very predictable cliffhanger isn't it...

Oh! It didn't! Excellent. And a lovely last line.

Having waited too long to request the second audiobook from Libby, I might end up just reading it in print. I've read so many books in this series on audio that I can basically call up the narrator's voice in my head at this point anyway.

[Sanjana]

Natalie has always dreamed of being a princess, especially after being shut out of all exciting things after she helped to lead the rebellion against the Ursuper of the Mountain Kingdom. She took the chance when an opportunity arose for her to be a companion to Princess Rose of Arcadia, when she heard that Rose was planning on going to Lanover with the only available prince of the right age Crown Prince Leo. When Rose proposes to switch places, once she hears of this madcap scheme and a way to escape her duty as a princess, Natalie jumps at the chance to know Prince Leo in person, if only his bothersome cousin wouldn't stop getting in her way. Also she's excited to learn there's something to be said about Princess Rose, when mysterious letters arrive, and Natalie can't wait to solve this herself, but she comes to know that there is more to being a princess than meets the eye.

[Jacquelyn 💐 {This Rapunzel Reads} [Jesus Christ, my Living Hope] · Rating 4 out of 5]

💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Buddy Read with Lydia and my first buddy read of the year! I was so excited when Melanie Cellier announced this novella and couldn’t wait to get back into her world! This is a retelling of the Prince and the Pauper. It did not disappoint! Natalie is a character…she is something else…that’s all I’ll say. 😂 I thought it was funny how she was so determined to have it her way and Prince Luca changed everything. He was one of a kind and perfect for her. It’s been a while since I read her other books so it did take me a bit to remember who everyone was. But I enjoyed the journey! I’m excited to read the next one and hopefully connect the missing dots!

💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

[H J Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wouldn't take too much stock in the other reviews that the MC is silly. It's great, it's very Cellier, and the MC acts like what she is: a young woman - a teenager, in fact - on her own for the first time. Natalie seems to have mellowed a bit with time, but that makes sense given her story. She learns her lessons along the way.
It also all ties up nicely without giving away details of the concurrent book.
If you love Cellier, you'll love this.

[Nic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ensnare a Prince

Awww how cute was this! I wish it was longer but oh well. I loved how Natalie was a go getter and went after what she wanted. She started off naive but being so young it makes complete sense. She had a great character arc. Luca was so charming and charismatic. I loved the first time they saw each other. That was a fun misunderstanding! This was a cute read!

No Spice (just kisses)
No explicit language
G Rated Violence/Gore
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️A cute novella

[Katherine Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Light Hearted Fun

Natalie was such an interesting character in the East of the Sun West of the Moon duology and getting to see the world from her perspective did not disappoint. She is ambitious, adventurous, loyal, a bit naive, and quick to take action particularly to protect those she loves. Luca is fun loving, charming, curious, thoughtful, and competitive. Together they make up another exciting adventure from the amazing Melanie Cellier.

[Maggie Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book very much! It is fast-paced and less detailed than some of Melanie Cellier’s other books (since it is a novella). Natalie was an entertaining narrator and it was nice to watch her character develop as she realized that being royal isn’t all she had assumed it to be. I am looking forward to reading ‘To Entangle a Heart!’

[LaShunda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A jaunty adventure

Well, some parts hit closer to home than I'm comfortable with, but it was a lovely story. I AM Soooooo curious about Rose's story now. Maybe I should have waited until both of them were out. I'm making up stuff as I type this. Can hardly wait for the next in this series!

[Sara Downs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charming story

It was great to see Natalie again and watch her become a little more humble, and relearn some of her goals. Great twist on this story. Can't wait to see Rose's side of the story!

[Lorin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved reading this wonderful book! I loved the characters and the plot! I had a hard time putting this wonderful book down! I absolutely loved this retelling of Prince and the Pauper! I am really looking forward to reading the next book in this really wonderful series!

[Charley · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good!

A wonderful retelling that kept me glued to the story. In fact, I read it all in one sitting. I was sad when I realized it was finished. I strongly recommend this HEA, clean, exciting fairytale.

[Sennin Kellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect Story

What a joy to read! I loved Luca and Natalie, the background story, and this was perfectly set up for me to be excited about the companion novella. A true success as I don’t usually enjoy side by side stories!

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the middle third of this book frustrating. Not a lot seems to happen and Natalie comes across as rather unlikeable. Things improve in the last third of the book, but I still didn't find it particularly compelling.

[Elodie Harper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute, short and sweet. it was fun to re-enter this world and Lanover was always one of my favourite kingdoms. It did a great job at hinting at the contents of the next book without giving much away so I'm excited to see the other half of the story.

[Melinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't think I would like this book a whole bunch because Natalie's life goals were strange to me. Fortunately, I grew to love her! I missed Melanie Celliers' usual dual POV in this book, but it looks like the next in the series will make up for that. Luca was fantastic and I love the banter.

[Haley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun, short read. I liked going back to the original kingdoms and learning more about where they are now. This was worth the read for sure!

[Kat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not her best work, The FMC was a train wreck, with main character syndrome until she realizes she doesn't like all the attention after all.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5☆