Heir Untamed by Danielle Bourdon

Heir Untamed

Latvala Royals #1

By:  Danielle Bourdon

Publish Date:  December 9, 2012 by Wildbloom Press

Genre:  Romance, Fantasy, Suspense

Pages:  318 Kindle

Source:  Author Free Day on Amazon

Desperate for work to avoid eviction from her Seattle apartment, photographer Chey Sinclair accepts a rare opportunity to travel abroad and photograph Latvala Royalty. Encountering the Royals for the first time, Chey experiences an instant attraction to Mattias, second in line to the throne. He's charming, confident—and taken.

During a horseback ride to clear her head, Chey finds herself in a scuffle with Sander Fisk, head of security. Rugged, determined and sharp tongued, Sander is infuriating as well as intriguing.

Faced with conflicting emotions and a mystery unfolding in the castle, Chey must decide between men: a Prince of Latvala, or an arrogant rogue.

She discovers the hard way that this particular fairy tale was more than she ever bargained for.

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I loved the zany fantasy premise of Heir Untamed when I came across Danielle Bourdon’s first book in the Latvala Royals series so I couldn’t pass on the free day at Amazon from a USA Today best-selling author.

So, right off, the premise of Chey being approached by a foreign royal family to take family photos for several months at their castle for an outrageous amount of money is… crazy – and fun! The fantasy solution to encroaching money problems as Chey has lost her job. Wouldn’t we all love that? She’s quick and jumps on the chance grabbing an early bird bonus of $5,000 (LOL).

The story moves quickly with Chey flying to Latvala and getting to work immediately snapping photos of the royal family. Just because they’re royal doesn’t mean they don’t have unpleasant secrets and Chey starts to see these early on. I found it interesting to see royals portrayed this way.

Prince Mattias is apparently drawn to Chey for her quite different take on things and considering the fish bowl he lives in, this seems a real possibility. I like that he isn’t afraid to expose her to what the royal family is actually like, making him very real and likeable.

Chey also meets Sander Fisk, sexy security, who protects her from the mysterious assailant that tries to shoot her. It is a bit far-fetched that anyone would want to do in an unimportant photographer but I’m going with the whole fantasy thing here.

However, I feel that some of Chey’s actions make her appear frankly silly. She’s a professional modern day photographer and should have more sense. Some of the tough spots she gets into could have been written in using other methods that don’t make her out to sometimes seem witless (don’t go alone to a haunted castle in a strange country in terrible weather). Strangely, at other times she seems quite perceptive.

I love the unexpected twist I didn’t see coming though I also felt tricked. The murderous subplot actually rounded out the story nicely.

This is a fast, fun read if you want romantic escapism without anything too heavy to think about. Squeeking in at 3.8 stars for being entertaining though this would be higher if Chey’s character was written in a more mature manner.

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