I loved Lars and Pippa!
Author Vivian Wood has done wonderful things in writing this Royal series, and this time is Lars and Pippa’s story, the one I have been waiting for. Best friends to lovers, fake engagements and a huge secret meant that I was captivated from the start.
Each in this series is a stand-a-lone, BUT, the best feel for the characters is of course gained through reading the earlier books, and I’m telling you now, this is no hardship. Ms Wood writes the best in bad boys, and the hot dirty talking sex is one hell of a bonus! Throughout these first books, Pippa has been Prince Lars one constant best friend. The looks of longing, and the odd behaviour between them has been noticed by his siblings, and her friends. Their book, told in a dual POV is finally here, and I loved it!
In Lars POV, we get their first day of meeting as barely teen newbies at a boarding school far from home, and I really felt that Ms Woods gave him an air of melancholy as he spoke of loneliness and the burden of being the spare to the heir. Right through his book, Lars never resented Stellan as heir or King, but his whole existence was defined as a ‘spare’, not good enough as the ‘real heir’ but too valuable to undertake the risky goal that he’d strived for, his entire life. I truly felt the burden weigh heavily around his neck. I read that moment when he fell in love with Pippa, where he knew she was too important to him to risk a move to more, and where he’s always known that she’d held a part of herself back from him.
Pippa had watched the boy she loved grow into a gorgeous man, albeit one who liked to spread his sexual favours far and wide. She knew of his goals and familial frustrations, and valued his friendship above all else, never showing her heart to a man who seemed to treat women like toys to be used only once. The tension between them though, could be cut through with a knife, and Ms Woods really capitalised on that as she put them through the motions of a forced fake engagement.
As with subsequent books in a series, I absolutely loved catching up with Stellan and Margot, and Erik and Nika, especially when they get all up in the business of our main characters. They really are a great support network for each other, and when there was someone in the background playing chess with their royal lives, they really needed to be watching each other’s backs.
This was a truly hot and romantic book to finish up this great and well written royal series from Vivian Wood. 5 Stars 👑