Royal Blood
£7.90£8.50 (-7%)
Kicked out of her American boarding school, Evan is sent to live with her estranged father, the King of England. Her existence as his illegitimate daughter is top secret – until someone leaks it to the press. Suddenly she’s the focus of a thousand lurid headlines, plus the hatred of her stepmother the Queen and half-sister Princess Maisie.
Then the royal scandal intensifies… After Evan is seen disappearing with a journalist’s son at a party, he is found dead and she becomes the primary suspect in a murder investigation. Did “the Killer Princess” really do it? It seems that only the Queen’s gorgeous nephew Kit will help Evan clear her name. But can she really trust anyone at the palace?
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Additional information
| Publisher | Usborne Publishing (13 April 2023) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 368 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1803701722 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1803701721 |
| Reading age | 14 years and up |
| Dimensions | 13.4 x 2.7 x 20.2 cm |
by L Fishwick
I loved the format of this clever novel, which had blog posts, interviews and text exchanges at the start of chapters. It features a very complicated family dynamic, plenty of tension, and felt very relevant.
by Amazon Customer
I devoured this book in one sitting – what a wild ride!
It very much gave vibes of ‘What A Girl Wants’ meets ‘One of Us is Lying’ meets ‘American Royals’ and I loved every second of it.
The perfect book for those who love a bit of mystery thrown in with royal scandal.
I’m waiting eagerly for the next book in the series to drop.
Thanks NetGalley and Usborne for the ARC.
by Danielle
Royal Blood is a Young Adult Mystery that really packs a punch dealing with some very sensitive topics.
The story is fast paced and there are a lot of red herrings to make you suspect the wrong people and go in the wrong direction.
I absolutely loved Evan, she was a modern day Mia Thermopolis but was really dealt a rough hand!
I cannot wait for more adventures in this series and can only imagine what Evan gets mixed up in next!
My Top 5 things from this book:
•Use of Text Messages
•London Sightseeing
•Evan
•Royal Family Characters
•First in a series
“A Scandal to die for”
by LibLob-x
Evan Bright has just been kicked out of yet another boarding school. To her surprise, she is shipped off to England as a result, to the father she’s never met – who just happens to be the King. Evan has been kept a secret her whole life, but her identify is suddenly leaked to the press – at the same time that a boy she was getting close to is found dead. And she was the last person to see him alive…
This book is tense and dramatic and I completely adored it! Love the character development and character relationships and the twists were suitably jaw dropping!
by Kate A.
I am always so happy when I read a book I know I’m going to enjoy but end up absolutely loving it and that is exactly what happened with Royal Blood. I knew from reading the description that it would be right up my street, a proverbial cat amongst the pigeons in a high-profile family and some big scandals thrown into the mix, it sounded like the perfect book to while away the weekend, a bit of light-hearted drama.
Turns out it wasn’t really all that light-hearted but was all the better for it, whilst there was the entertaining drama that I was hoping for there was also a lot of big themes in this book that meant that I was so much more invested in the characters and the story than I maybe initially thought I would be.
I will admit that I wasn’t sure about Evan at first, it kind of felt like she was doing everything backwards, but as the story progressed and I found out more about her and her situation I was definitely in her corner. I loved that she was still snarky and upfront with the royals when everyone else wasn’t and that she wasn’t afraid to stick up for herself in some pretty intense situations.
I really liked that we got to see Alexander making mistakes and then trying to rectify them, that his intentions looked different the more you got to know about his situation. There were a lot of characters that added the right kind of balance to the story, so that the conflict wasn’t just from what was happening but also from those around Evan, and there was a lot of room for growth which I think was done really well with some of the characters.
The plot was fantastic, there were the events surrounding the murder but there was also a lot of politics and manipulation around Evan being in London, I felt like it kept the pace and the tension going throughout the story. There were a few things that I didn’t expect at all which was a nice surprise, sometimes it can feel too obvious as to what’s about to happen, but in this book I was so engrossed in what was happening that it didn’t feel too predictable.
I have to say I was very excited by the ending because I think that this is going to be a series and I can’t wait to see what happens next.
by K. J. Kelly
It’s a bit like a murder plot set inside a mashup of King Ralph and The Princess Diaries, with a dash of mental health awareness and a social media cautionary tale. Phew. But it’s thoroughly enjoyable and hopefully the start of a successful series with a nicely different set of characters and settings.
Persistent school-expellee Evan (Evangeline) is nearing 18. Once again ‘asked to leave’ a school after accidentally starting a fire, she’s collected and sent to live with her father in England. Where he’s the King. Evan has known her whole life that she’s a very tangential part of the British Royal Family, and wants nothing to do with them. After all, her mother’s schizophrenia has meant they’ve been kept apart for 7 years, and her mother is still fixated on the man she once had a fling with, while he was married to the Queen… All she wants is to reach 18, and then be able to leave her years of his custody behind her.
But now she has been summoned to London and is about to meet her half-sister for the first time, the rest of the family, and of course, her father. But in the midst of an already diverting storyline, a death Evan is implicated in is thrown into the pot. And her identity, so long kept under wraps, is threatened by publicity and notoriety.
Alternating Evan’s narrative with newspaper and social media articles/comments, we see how the world views the Royal Family and its newest member’s doings. I liked seeing how Evan and her family are placed into the real British monarchy’s recent history, with obvious changes made, and how we feel we are getting an insider’s perspective on royalty and royal life. Evan is the perfect outsider for us, sarcastic and witty, bolshy and independent.
Her story is wish-fulfilment gone wrong, with a rather upsetting story pushed into her world that will bring sympathy from and also potential upset for readers. The book answers questions that will raised as you read along, and sets the stage for various endings and solutions.
Highly enjoyable, it’s light enough with some dark moments to be a great new series for those looking for something that mixes genres and ‘classes’. Love Evan, and I would definitely consider Book 2.
With thanks to Netgalley for providing a sample reading copy.