Once Upon a Tower by Eloisa James

  

Once upon a time…

A duke fell in love

Gowan Stoughton of Craigievar, Duke of Kinross, values order and self-control above all else. So when he meets a lady as serene as she is beautiful, he promptly asks for her hand in marriage.

With a lady

Edie—whose passionate temperament is the opposite of serene—had such a high fever at her own debut ball that she didn’t notice anyone, not even the notoriously elusive Duke of Kinross. When her father accepts his offer… she panics.

And when their marriage night isn’t all it could be, she pretends.

In a tower.

But Edie’s inability to hide her feelings makes pretending impossible, and when their marriage implodes, she retreats to a tower—locking Gowan out.

Now Gowan faces his greatest challenge. Neither commands nor reason work with his spirited young bride. How can he convince her to give him the keys to the tower…

When she already has the keys to his heart?

***** 

I’m a huge fan of Eloisa James’s Fairy Tales series, each book a delightful, sexy, poignant retelling of a time honored classic fairy tale. Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, The Ugly Duckling, The Princess and the Pea… all wonderful stories revisited, their happily ever afters given a lively, fresh twist. And now it’s ‘Rapunzel’s’ turn to be freed from the tower she’s locked herself away in, but can her Prince Not-So-Charming convince her to let him in, before it’s too late?

Truly, I’ve enjoyed every single story in this somewhat-related-but-not-quite-connected series. Humor, passion, romance, lessons to be learned… all woven together to create not just romance novels, but beautiful love stories. Book after book I find myself laughing, sighing, fanning myself, and sometimes even crying... and when the story is through, I find myself wanting more.

I fell head over heels in love with Gowan! What an amazing, sexy, Highlander! To say I adore him is putting it mildly, though there were moments I wished I could reach through the pages and smack him right upside his gorgeous head! Stubborn, yes - clueless, definitely! But when a man's heart is on the line - especially a man afraid of repeating his parent's horrible mistakes - there are bound to be issues. But what I love most about Gowan is that he thinks things through, works things out, and does whatever he must to make all things right.

Edie is a fun heroine! Innocent but not naive, clueless but not stupid, in her upcoming marriage she wants to avoid the mistakes that her own parents made. But when your role model is a step mother who thinks flirting with men and smoking cheroots is the way to get your husband's attention, things are bound to get sticky. I truly did love both Edie and her step mother Layla, but I wanted to throttle Edie for turning to Layla for advice, given Layla's unorthodox and ineffective methods for wooing a man.

Despite those moments when I wanted to do bodily harm to Gowan and Edie, I adored them both! Once again, Eloisa James has breathed new life into a classic fairy tale, giving us a story to lose ourselves in with people to love, and they lived happily ever after!

My thanks to Avon Books and Edelweiss for providing me with a copy of this story in exchange for an honest review.