Narrated by Cornell Collins
The Princess Trap is one of Talia Hibbert’s earlier books that I hadn’t got around to reading yet, so I was happy to add the audiobook to my review list, particularly because the narrator came highly recommended by my fellow AudioGals reviewer, Caz.
Prince Ruben of Helgmøre travels to England where he inspects a fancy school, as he is considering utilising the school for his scholarship program. While the school does not impress, he does meet Cherry Neita there and he is instantly and deeply smitten. Cherry is a Black woman of Jamaican heritage and she’s generously built and gorgeous. She’s also wonderfully confident and that makes her even more attractive. She works in Human Resources at the school and Ruben persuades her to come to lunch with him. It’s her birthday so she decides to treat herself with time spent with a gorgeous and obviously wealthy man. However, Ruben is travelling somewhat incognito and does not disclose he is a prince.
Ruben had been struggling with the aftermath of a sex scandal (he didn’t do anything wrong) and the paparazzi are still hounding him. He thinks he’s relatively safe in England but we all know what thought did.
Before too long, Ruben and Cherry have been caught nearly en flagrante delicto and to save Cherry from being harassed, Ruben identifies her as his fiancée. Needless to say, Cherry is pretty surprised and not at all happy about this.
The more Ruben thinks about things, the more he realises that having Cherry as his fake fiancée for a year or so would be great for him and he offers her a LOT of money to agree. Cherry has a sister with a serious illness who is studying in America so the family do need the money. As much as Ruben is decidedly not her favourite person at that point, she agrees.
The story then shifts to Helgmøre (a fictional Nordic country) and gradually, Cherry learns more about Ruben and begins to let go of her anger. She comes to understand why he did what he did and to realise that he’s a good man in need of someone in his corner. Ruben does apologise very well and, while he makes some mistakes, he’s never mean or cruel and his goal is to make Cherry happy.
Cherry is a powerhouse and her confidence and encouragement help Ruben to step into being the man he truly is and outside of the shadow of his evil half-brother, King Harald.
Listeners may wish to note that there is family violence in the story (King Harald is a very bad dude) – it is not explicit but the way it was written gets the point across very well and it might be distressing for some.
The story itself is fairly predictable but it was well done and enjoyable, largely because of the characters. Cherry stands up for herself and doesn’t take any crap and I loved her hard.
The narration was good. Cornell Collins had a softened tone for the female characters but it wasn’t especially feminine sounding. It was enough for me to buy into the fantasy, however. Ruben has a Nordic accent and it threw me a little bit that his thinking was with an English accent and his speaking was not.
Ruben likes a bit of D/s play and gets pretty aggressive in bed. Not violent; it’s more in his speech. It didn’t always work super well for me. I didn’t find it all that sexy, I found it intimidating and a little off-putting at times. It’s difficult to know whether it was the narration or the text or a combination of both which led to this reaction because other books where this is featured haven’t drawn the same reaction from me. Now when I look at the ebook (which I did to check some spelling and a few other things to write this review) it is Mr. Collins’ voice and expression I hear in my head when I read those scenes so I can’t separate the audio from the text anymore. It’s not constant and it’s not bad but it wasn’t to my taste at times. It may very well work great for other listeners.
One of the best things (among many) about Talia Hibbert’s books is the female empowerment. Cherry is wonderful and I’d recommend The Princess Trap for her alone. But the romance here is fun as well and Ruben, when he’s not being bossy in bed, is very sweet.
Kaetrin
Buy The Princess Trap by Talia Hibbert on Amazon
