Rescuing the Royal Runaway Bride

The Royals of Vallemont #1

by Ally Blake

Royal bride on the run…

Into the arms of an enigmatic rescuer…

On the way to the Vallemont royal wedding, Will Darcy’s overblown sense of chivalry leads him to rescue a damsel in a muddy wedding dress! And, yes, it’s the princess-to-be! While the media furor dies down, they’re holed up in one hotel room where irrepressible Sadie makes buttoned-up Will reconsider his life. For once work isn’t his priority—resisting the tantalizing royal runaway is!

Genres: Romance

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 23, 2018

About the author

Australian romance author Ally Blake loves reading and strong coffee, porch swings and dappled sunshine, sparkly notebooks and soft, dark pencils.

She also adores writing love stories. Having sold over four million copies of her Harlequin Mills and Boon novels worldwide, she is living her dream.

Alongside one husband, three gloriously rambunctious kids, and too many animal companions to count, Ally lives and writes in the leafy western suburbs of Brisbane.

Find out more about Ally’s books at www.allyblake.com.

Reviews

[Suze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Will is on his way to a royal wedding. The groom is one of his best friends, but Will hasn't seen him in a long time due to traumas of the past. When he's close to his friend's palace he almost hits a woman and only just manages to stop his car before it's too late. Will has no idea who the woman is, but because of the way she's dressed he guesses she must be the bride. Sadie has run away from her wedding. Why has she done this?

Will takes Sadie to a hotel room to keep her away from the press. This messes up his plans considerably. For Will life is all about work. He's a famous astronomer and has a full agenda. Because of old friendships he clears his schedule. Spending time with Sadie makes Will think about his choices. Sadie is an attractive woman, but she was also about to get married to his friend. Can Will resist the temptation and should he?

Rescuing the Royal Runaway Bride is a wonderful romantic story. Will is a serious man. Work is his number one priority and he's really good at what he does. This also means he's been living alone and out of a suitcase for a long time. There's no time for friends and love and Will doesn't have any family. Meeting Sadie and taking care of her while she's clearly in distress, is the best thing that could have happened to him. I loved seeing the transformation in this kindhearted sensitive man. Sadie is sweet, funny and intelligent. I loved the chemistry between them, but they're in a complicated situation, as Sadie was supposed to get married to Will's friend. I couldn't turn the pages quickly enough to find out where this would lead and if they'd find their happily ever after.

Ally Blake has written a fabulous entertaining story about discovering what it's like to fall in love. I loved the way she describes the emotions of her main characters. There's plenty of drama in this story, but there's also another more sensitive side. I liked the intrigues around the missed wedding, it gives the story a spectacular start. Ally Blake combines a terrific love story with a gorgeous setting and makes her story come to life in a great way. Rescuing the Royal Runaway Bride is charming, fun and adorable. I absolutely loved this amazing book.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Content: Typical of this line of books, some innuendo, a little mild language, closed door/fade to black sex

[Dorian Jandreau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jis astronomas. Ji pabėgusi princo nuotaka. Veiksmas vyksta sukurtame Valemonte. Skyriai gan ilgi. Susitikę netikėtomis aplinkybėmis, kai ji beveik partrenkiama Vilo mašinos ir įstrigusi purve bėgdama nuo vestuvių su jo geriausiu draugu. Taip jie atsiduria viešbutyje, kuriame Ji sužino, kad Vilas princo geriausias draugas, o jis žino, kas ji. Seidė gan vaikiška, o Vilas labai rimtas. Abu labai skirtingi ir užsispyrę, tačiau pamilsta vienas kitą.

[Indrė · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's nothing what I would typically read or it is not a masterpiece, but it is pretty interesting. Light and easy reading about royal drama. Of course it was cheesy and predictable. But I like the idea of an independent man, who prefers to be on his own, but suddenly falls in love and everything changes. It is somehow liberating.

[Angel Hatfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will was on his way to the royal wedding of his friend Hugo- Prince Alessandro Hugo Giordano who was marrying a Mercedes gray Leomine. . Will was an astronomer, his field truly a game of extrapolation- using ancient evidence to build current theory relying on calculations that pushed against the edges of the range of known values. You had to be part cowboy, part explorer, part decoder idealist, and seer to do well in this field.- something Will had addressed at the Space and Time Forum the night before. He should arrive at the palace just in time for the ceremony to start. There was the lecture on wormholes he was due to give at the University of Amsterdam in a couple of days. The podcast with newyorker.com, the notes from his editor on the second edition of will’s graduate level astronomy textbook due any day. Then there was the virtual reality game set in Orion Nebula for which he was both investor and technical advisor. Reasons enough Will could have skipped this trip. But one reason to go to the wedding was to see his old friend get married. Will had been invited to the palace over a decade before but because of a skiing accident he couldn’t go but his twin sister Claire went alone. Claire should have been marrying the prince. A few weeks later Will’s life had been irrevocably tragically changed and he had lost everything. Also Vallemont became a throbbing bruise on his subconscious every since. This was a chance to put things right. Will’s sight was hindered for a second by a shadow and light dancing across his hands. Will slammed on the breaks and the car skidded to a jarring halt. The engine sputtered and died. Will opened his eyes and in the center of his broad screen stood a woman in a big formal dress that was larger than she was. Black streaked tears ran down her cheeks. Will asked if she was alright and finally she opened her eyes and answered she was stuck. Will pulled her foot out of the mud and offered her a ride which she declined. Will did not do people problems, evidentiary problems as time management had been a problem for Will he still had to get to Hugo’s wedding. Will then realized this woman was Mercedes/Sadie Gray Leonene- Hugo’s future bride and she was going away from the palace not to it. Sadie was determined to make it to the border after crying non-stop for an hour. Sadie had grown up a normal girl in the palace. She thought of her life there before she left at twenty and traveled to N Y. At twenty five she fled from N Y and moved back to the palace. She hadn’t yet thought of the anxious, fractured, out of control mess of the past few weeks. Sadie was a teacher and her students had been twelfth grade drama students who would swoon over the man who had got her out of the mud. When Sadie had become engaged she had been “encouraged” to take a sabbatical from her job. The palace suggested six months to settle into her new role before deciding if she wished to return to work as a teacher. She had imagined a quiet. Intimate ceremony. The legal joining of two friends in a mutually beneficial arrangement that had somehow spiraled out of control. Mercedes had climbed out of a small window in the small antichamber of the palace chapel and ran. Sadie’s mother had been a maid at the palace before Sadie had been born and she hoped running would not be taken out on her mother. The palace had been her mother’s home for nearly thirty years. If they fired her mother for what Sadie had done … Sadie borrowed will’s phone to text her mother to tell her that it wasn’t right for her or Hugo and Sadie couldn’t go through with the wedding. It had taken twenty years for Sadie to agree to marry Hugo who had been her best friend since birth. Sadie knew she needed to get going and agreed to let Will take her to the village. When Will stopped for gas he called Hugo to let him know Sadie was with him. Hugo asked Will to watch over her until he could send someone for Sadie. They went to a hotel and Sadie borrowed a track suit form Will and changed in the car before they went inside to check in. Natalie had worked for Will for seven years- though they had never met- after having been attached to his case by a publicity firm the week his textbook was first published. Finding Natalie tough. keen and pedanter he hired her permanently as his assistant. They worked together over the phone and online. Natalie ran Will’s bookings, planned his travel, and was the gatekeeper between him and his business manager, clients,institutions,conglomerates and governments the world over. Will had several engagements coming up just as he liked it. Sadie finally called Hugo and he asked her to stay with Will until he could find someone to come get her - a bodyguard. The people must really hate Sadie when she heard this. Hugo came to the hotel and told Sadie to go to London with Will and she did and stayed at his home there. They were both feeling something.
I enjoyed this book. It made me chuckle at times. I liked the plot but this did drag for me at times. I felt so bad that Will had been torn from his twin Claire that he had loved so much. Even years later he felt the pain of that loss. I loved how close Hugo and Sadie were even after she ran rather than marry him. Even then Hugo blamed himself for the mess of the aborted wedding. This was a light easy read. I liked Sadie and Will together and how they “ dance” around each other especially since Sadie had been Hugo’s runaway bride but Hugo still wanted her safe and to protect Sadie. I liked the characters and the ins and outs of this book and I recommend.

[JaimeKristal BookLover]

From the title I was not quite sure what to expect, maybe presumed a princess was escaping an arranged marriage or similar. However, I soon discovered Sadie is the commoner best friend of her prince-groom, and cannot go through with the marriage. I do not know how the author made this work so well, because even as you anticipate the budding relationship between Will and Sadie you cannot help but fall in love with the royal Sadie jilted.

The author managed to write the male main character in a way that humanizes him when he could have easily become a stock character. Sadie even likens Will to a Byronic hero, Mr Rochester, but I think Will is a bit more P&P's Mr Darcy... Even their names match! It is actually the prince I found embodied that literary definition with his many mysterious layers and I cannot wait for his book to be published.

The book wraps up Will and Sadie's story with a pretty bow while giving hints as to what may come next for the prince, which makes you just want more. This novel is exactly what is needed after a stressful week: Light, fluffy, guaranteed HEA.

[Romantic Intentions Quarterly · Rating 4 out of 5]

The clunky and unappealing title of this modern romance (a recent, often annoying trend among category lines) does no justice to what turned out to be the fun, fast-paced tale of a heroine who decides that being a royal princess is not for her, after all, and a workaholic hero who looks up at the stars and down at his computer, but at very little in between--only to find his perfect match quite literally stuck in front of him. There are no bad guys in this story, and no mystery; just very relatable people who ultimately want the best for one another, and allow an unexpected love to flourish. The happily ever after is absolutely lovely. -- Megan Osmond

4 1/2 stars

This review appears in Romantic Intentions Quarterly #1.

[Nikki · Rating 1 out of 5]

Whew, this poor books is so tiny and it took me forever to get through, never a good sign. I really liked the three main characters, and would have liked to see them all in different books where they could shine. Nothing happens! It should be really really dramatic and life-altering stuff but mostly just hanging out and waiting. Each one of these characters were so cool and I was dying to know more but more never came. Just sitting and talking and assuming alot about each other. Sadly not a good runaway bride romance. Skip.

[Mari · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cute romance that almost wasn’t. Will goes out of his way to rescue Sadie from many things. He finally stopped thinking of work to do something else. And Sadie and her mother were able to find their own way in life, very happily.

[Frankie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice sweet read with likable characters and a nice HEA.

[Ieva Abromavičienė · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kartais labai norisi romantinės komedijos knygos pavidale. Va ir variantas=))

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I couldn't get a handle on the heroine's personality and I thought the hero too intractable for insta-love. Also, why did they never order room service? Still, Ally Blake is always worth a read.

[Summer · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars. Charming isn’t a word that tends to pop up in my vocabulary all that often, but charming so perfectly captures the feeling of Rescuing the Royal Runaway Bride.

The plot is very simple, while running away from the wedding, a royal bride meets cute with someone else and in the process of laying low from the resulting scandal, she discovers the person she’d least like to run away from, which is good since she had this niggling fear that maybe she, like her dad, is prone to running. None of this involves much angst, there’s no shouting or sniping, even the jilted groom part of things is handled in a cute totally civilized and heartwarming fashion. This probably won’t satisfy readers who crave more intense melodrama and conflict, it’s much more suited to those in the mood for a romance as light as meringue.

My inner six year old, the little girl in me still drawn to all things pink and sparkly or better still a combination of the two, loved that the fictional kingdom of Vallemont was so, so heavenly invested in pink, the palace, the royal colours, the big wedding dress, it all just delighted me, like something out of a My Little Pony cartoon or a Barbie playset or anything equally girlish and fanciful that would have topped my Christmas wish list back in the day.

Often when I sing the praises of an Ally Blake book, it’s about the dialogue, the banter is every bit as witty as you’d hope for here, however, even though this is a mostly lighthearted book, for me, it shone brightest in the emotional moments, whether loss, heartache, sex, newly discovered love, there’s just something so fresh and refreshing in the phrases and words she chose, capturing things in this unique, oddly perfect way, where you’re like, huh, I’ve been reading romance novels forever and never heard it put that way before and beyond being different from the standard tired cliches, most importantly, it’s true to the feeling it’s meant to describe.

This author has such a distinct voice that maybe won’t speak to every reader, but if her sensibilities mesh with yours, she’ll become an autobuy you’ll never regret.

[Gale · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked this book and series. Even though the premise of the runaway bride is so not funny, trust that the meet-cute between Sadie and Will is hilarious. It really was a great love story with lots of funny and touching scenes.

[Harlequin Books]

Miniseries: The Royals of Vallemont