Bookish thoughts!!!

english review only (spoilerfree)

Netgalley ebook

Summary: Star hockey player Daniel Sacachelli wants only two things: 1) for the Falcons to win next season, and 2) for his secret — the fact he’s actually the prince of Eldonia — to never make its way to Chicago. But if Daniel keeps avoiding his crown, their family will lose their kingdom forever.

Madison Myong can’t believe that her will-they-or-won’t-they best friend Daniel is really a prince! He’s always seemed more rebel than royal. But now, he needs to clean up his image, fast. Posing as his long time girlfriend, Madison accompanies him back to Eldonia, intending to give Daniel a makeover fit for a king.

Only, the more royal Daniel becomes, the more Madison misses her best friend. And if she does her job right, she’ll lose him forever...

My review: This book was just so much fun!!!

Gosh, it feels like forever ago since I read the first book in the Chicago Falcons series. I missed it. I missed these wonderful characters. Also, shocking, and really surprising for someone with my bad memory, I still knew most of what happened in the first book. Would you look at that?

I had this book on my tbr for ages now (gosh, I'm so behind on all my Netgalley ARC's. This one is a year old. Oops).

I'm so happy that I finally read it. To be honest, when I started the book I didn't read the summary and I surely didn't remember it from a year ago. So  e v e r y t h i n g  came as a total surprise. I'm not even kidding. The first sentence of the summary tells you that Daniel is a freaking prince and still, when it was revealed in the book, I was totally freaking out and grinning like an idiot, cause OMG, DANIEL IS A PRINCE!!!!

All I remembered from way back when was that I LOVED MADDISON, and that I was so freaking excited that she got her own book cause SHE IS ALL KINDS OF AMAZING, and she was the greatest friend to Alice in the first book.

So now that I got all my rambling out of the way, let's dive into the actual review.

I love the writing. I just love the flow of the whole story and you can't tell at all that this was written by two people. I loved it.

The characters are amazing, duh. Like I said, I loved Maddison in the first book. She was amazing. So I loved her right from the start in this book, obviously. And Daniel. the prince (hihihi, I'm still giddy about that. Excuse me!). I loved that Hayden and Alice from the first book didn't take a total backseat and were only mentioned a few times but that they actually played a really big part in this book. I also really loved Eva, Daniel's sister.

The relationships.
Let me start with family dynamics, cause that is were the good stuff is. I loved the relationship between Daniel and his mom. Single moms doing their absolute best and raising amazing dudes. YESSSS!!!! I also loved the bit of Maddison's family that we saw. They actually just showed up two times, in the beginning of the book and the end, and what a night and day difference those two scenes were. LOVED IT!!!

Friendships. F R I E N D S H I P S.
BE STILL MY BLEEDING HEART, cause this is were it's at. THIS IS THE STUFF MY DREAMS ARE MADE OF. Daniel and Maddison. Their friendship. I just love relationships that start in friendship and become more. I love Daniel and Hayden and how they always got each others back. Maddison and Alice. Girls supporting each other. And also how Eva fit right into them, even though these three girls are all kinds of different. I LOVED IT.

Storywise. I loved the whole Prince Daniel thing. I loved the whole book pretty much playing in Eldonia and meeting some of the people there. It was such a different vibe from the first book. I loved it. Ice hockey was still a big part of the book, cause it's such a big part of Daniel, and seeing him torn between not wanting to leave his old live behind but also helping his sister and protecting her from having to marry such a douchbag. It hurt my heart.

It was a beautiful story that was quite predictably BUT THAT WAS JUST WHAT I NEEDED. I needed amazing friendships, loveable characters and a mindset of "everything is going to get really terrible before everything gets wrapped up in a nice little bow and all will be right in the world".