Review by Booklist Review
Lady Camille Lydingham loves her family, but they are totally wrong for the part. The one thing Prince Nikolai of Greater Avalonia wishes above all else is to spend Christmas with a proper English family, and Camille's relatives are anything but proper. So, to fulfill the prince's holiday wish (and perhaps ensure her place as the next Princess of Greater Avalonia), Camille hires a troupe of actors to impersonate members of her immediate family and act as servants at Millworth Manor. Camille is all set to raise the curtains on her production of a good, old-fashioned English Christmas when a player not in the original script suddenly walks onstage. Eleven years earlier, Grayson Elliott and Camille were set to marry until she threw him over for another man. Now Gray returns to write a new part for himself in Camille's life. With an extraordinary flair for creating delightfully entertaining characters and an impeccable sense of comic timing worthy of Gilbert and Sullivan, Alexander presents readers with a splendidly sexy holiday gift.--Charles, John Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Alexander's divine Victorian Christmas confection provides an abundance of wit and warmth. Camille, the widowed Lady Lydingham, hires a troupe of down-on-their-luck actors to masquerade as her family and staff in order to entice the handsome, if shifty, Prince Nicolai Pruzinsky to propose. What could go wrong? Everything, starting with the unexpected reappearance of Grayson Elliott, Camille's long-ago love, who's bemused to arrive at her house and be asked whether he's there to audition. Alexander takes full comedic advantage of every possible plot twist as the farce threatens time and again to come crashing down. Actors flub their lines and disasters cascade, and it's up to Camille, Grayson, and Camille's delightful twin, Beryl, to shore up the increasingly shaky burlesque and keep the prince's proposal on track. This star belongs at the top of the tree. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Nov.)? (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Possessed of a family that is anything but traditional, Camille, the young widowed Lady Lydingham, sets out to provide a "traditional English Christmas, a la Dickens," for her current romantic quarry, handsome, debonair Prince Nikolai Pruzinsky. She takes advantage of her family's absence and hires a company of actors to "become" her proper relatives for the season. It all seems a brilliant idea, until Grayson Elliott, the friend Camille hasn't seen since the day he stammered his love for her and then left her engaged to another man, shows up at the front door and refuses to leave. Wary but relieved when Gray agrees to help her maintain the subterfuge, Camille has no idea that Gray has his own agenda: to keep her from marrying the prince and claim her for himself. VERDICT Clever, quirky, and thoroughly delightful, this creative Christmas confection features a houseful of offbeat characters, a surfeit of family members, and a pair of protagonists who finally get things right. Alexander (My Wicked Little Lies) lives in Omaha. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
