The Princess Deception

By: Nell Stark

Narrated by: Nicola Victoria Vincent

Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's Summary

When Sebastian, the Crown Prince of Belgium, overdoses on heroin shortly before he is set to launch Belgium's campaign to host the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament, his family manages to hush up the scandal. While the royals are debating how to proceed, Sebastian's twin sister Viola decides to impersonate him to keep Belgium's bid hopes alive. 

Missy Duke is a freelance reporter covering Belgium's World Cup bid. A former women's soccer player whose career was sidelined by injury, she is now trying to break into the male-dominated sportscasting world. While in Belgium, she meets the imposter Sebastian and soon realizes that he is actually Viola. Sensing a big story in the making, Duke feigns ignorance and plays along with the charade. 

Real sparks develop between the two women, but will the double deception doom this fairy-tale romance? 

A Princess Affair romance

©2018 Nell Stark (P)2018 Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

Terrible Accents, Chunks of Missing Plot...

I usually love Nell Stark's Princess Series but this one was a doozy for me. The story was alright but it felt like huge chunks of the action were just glossed over. By the end, I still didn't have a clear picture of the event that was THE central plot point kicking off the story and another half-dozen unanswered questions to boot.
I also had a big problem with a particular sex scene. Without giving away spoilers, there was a scene that made a point multiple times of clarifying that it was consentual but was at best emotional blackmail IMO. As a plot point, I understand is place, but in the aftermath, it wasn't addressed between the charcters as problematic; in fact, it was written off as a sub/dom thing. ..
Finally, the narration. I've heard quite a few books narrated by NVV and quite enjoyed them, but this one was actually difficult to listen to without cringing. There were a variety of accents; the main two being Belgian and New Jersey... both of which were plain awful.
As I said, I usually really like this series and NVV as a narrator but this one missed the mark on almost every level for me :/

3 people found this helpful

Great story, bad accents.

I liked the Taming of the Shrew retell and found the overall story pretty decent. It definitely wasn’t my favorite princess book from Nell Stark but I enjoyed it for the most part.

I ended up not being able to finish the audible version and just bought the book though because the accents were so so bad. Nicola Vincent’s voice is lovely but her American accents are not great.

good, but not the best from Nell Stark

This is a good audio book but I was a little disappointed because the other Nell Stark books were so impressive and the narration was amazing but with this audio book... I just didn't love it as much as the other books and this time the same narrator whom I love usually did an American accent and it started to bother me (and I was hoping Nicola Victoria vincent didn't think all Americans sounded so nasally and whiney)... So I did enjoy the book and I love the author and narrator But I guess they've spoiled me on the other audiobooks so much that I felt a tiny bit let down.

Great book!

Enjoyed this book thoroughly. It'd been a while since I read a book by Nell Stark and I wasn't disappointed. The book had a lot of great depth within the characters and storyline. The cake topper for me was the narrator. She brought a range of voices that were believable and a good amount if emotion thru each. Overall great book! I look forward to many more and highly recommend this one as well!

Strangely similar

So I have not yet finished this book and I will see right my review when I have finished, but so far just wanted to point out that this book is very similar to the movie she's the man. Same story line and same character names. I have a few Nell stark books and I normaly like them we shall see how this one turns out. Rating given now is because I have not yet finished the book.