Excerpt here.
Naledi Smith was orphaned at the age of four, never got adopted by anyone and was passed around various foster homes, and she's learned to be a rock and an island. She's also managed to make it into grad school in epidemiology, even if she feels she has to eat shit every time her jerk coworker tries to pass his work on to her. (I RELATE.) She's barely squeaking by in life and waitressing on the side and waiting to hear about her summer job. So when someone starts sending her suspiciously Nigerian scammer sounding emails about how she's really engaged to a prince, she rolls her eyes and hits delete, or just writes back saying to fuck off.
Except for once, this isn't bullshit. Unbeknownst to Naledi, her parents were fairly high up in the country of Thesolo and besties with the royal family and she was deemed the appropriate goddess appointed fiance to the heir, Thabiso, as a kid. Until her parents ran off without telling anyone and then died in a car accident, that is. Everyone in Thesolo is ticked off at the family, Naledi included, for abandoning them, and they're all quite resentful about it. However, Prince Thabiso is still kind of fascinated at the idea of having a missing soulmate he hasn't seen since he was a child. Even though his parents have moved on and have found him some other dutiful woman to marry, Thabiso wants someone with some passion and fire, and after his assistant Likotsi (i.e. the emailer) tracks Naledi down, they go to New York to find her and tell her.
Yes, the plot of this is uh...a lot like Coming To America meets Black Panther. There's no denying. Especially when Thabiso takes the opportunity to (briefly) get a job at Naledi's restaurant and ah, rent her neighbor's apartment for a bit. Undeniably, this is both something that will and does eventually tick Naledi off, but at the same time you have to admit that had he just walked up and introduced himself, she would have told him to fuck off, so.... Anyway, they hit it off, eventually she finds out, Naledi gets mad, Thabiso invites her to visit the country. She's also enticed by something else: after her summer job goes buh-bye, she finds out that some unexplained illness epidemic is going on in Thesolo and it's affected her grandparents. Maybe she can do something....
Anyway: on the characterization and romance, this book is tops. I feel for Naledi and her scientific terminology for how she has to keep herself, and how she has to learn to let someone. Thabiso is a bit spoiled but good at heart, and they work well together as a couple and it's all very sweet. (And that cover is lovely.) I'm also amused at stuff like Thabiso gets a blanket woven for her with uh...a special in joke. So as a romance, it works great. The side characters aren't in it as much but are fun when they are. I liked his assistant and her best friend, I guess the latter is going to be in her own book soon. And the donkey was adorable.
What's a little weak here are about two things:
(a) Naledi's spent her whole life wanting to be an epidemiologist and there is no discussion whatsoever about how presumably she's going to have to give up her career to be a princess. Or alternately, since Thesolo seems to be a fairly technological country, they don't discuss if Naledi can just like, transfer to a Thesolian grad school and/or keep up the epidemiology while princessing. Literally, Naledi does not bring this up at all and I can't help but think that a science geek like her would ask, regardless of how schmoopy she is feeling with the dude now. In our modern era when a girl's still gotta give up her career to do public/charity events when she marries a prince, this is definitely something to uh, bring up in conversation if you decide to stick with that engagement. Just saying. I'm surprised it never came up.
(b) Everyone is ridiculously snitty at someone who got orphaned at age four about "choosing" to abandon her country. Dude. She was FOUR. NOT HER DECISION TO LEAVE. She had no idea she was even from another country at all. Once y'all found that out, everyone should have chilled out and gotten off her back about that. I'm looking at you, royal highnesses, in particular.
(c) The mystery of what happened with Naledi's parents: I have to ask: has NO ONE in Thesolo ever read a mystery novel? Seriously? Because it sounds like all they did was get mad at the parents for abandoning them and literally did not bother to wonder why or what the hell happened or I guess even try to find them. But the reason why I think nobody there has ever read a mystery is that the bare facts of the situation, it sounds fishy and it should have occurred to someone that this may be a mystery:
- Two people who are absolutely loyal to the royal family enough to engage their child to them suddenly disappear. Gee, I wonder if something bad happened to make them do that? Maybe they are in trouble perhaps?
- Especially when they die soon after fleeing (though more on this goes below the spoiler cut).
- Also, Naledi's mom's brother Alekh is pretty much sketchy/fishy/shifty even when he's barely mentioned and I can just picture the expressions on everyone's faces every time they are talking about him.
I'll talk about that more below the spoiler cut too, but the mystery is... a bit weak and almost wrapped up at the end but not quite enough. It's kinda strange. Could have been better done there.
Overall, I'm giving it about three and a half stars. Could be a bit better in execution, but as a romance it's very sweet.
Spoiler space
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It's never mentioned or confirmed that the accident that killed Naledi's parents was anything other than an accident, but I kept thinking all along that Alekh had to have set it up. Kinda a bit of a plot fail that I guess he didn't, really?
I did wonder how they were going to handle the illness plot--is Naledi going to solve it after being a ...first year grad student? I'm not sure how far along she is. To be fair, she jumps into the work, but it turns out the solution is a lot simpler than that and Naledi figures it out after she becomes suddenly ill herself and realizes why it happened. The villain is no surprise but it's kind of weird that it's left at "I guess your uncle wanted to use you as part of some plot and your parents didn't agree so they ran off with you, but even though we arrested him your uncle won't say." Huh?
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