Royal Replicas by Michael Pierce

Where do I begin with this… I both liked and disliked this book.  Also, I feel like I need the next to help finish forming my opinion… BUT I’ve been waiting months.  I’m a greedy reader; I hate waiting.  I guess I should back up…

Royal Replicas tells the story of Victoria Sandalwood who lives a Harry Potter-esque life with an adoptive family complete with father who’s abusive.  She’s having some memory issues when she gets called away to visit the queen and learns she’s a clone of the queen’s deceased daughter.  Along with a dozen others.  And they are now vying for the love of a Prince so that they can be said daughter publicly, as well as be a princess/future queen, etc.

• If anyone’s read The Selection Series by Kiera Cass, you have the basic gist of this.  So now I’ve compared the book to two other series that were both successful, so how original is this?  It’s one of those “is there any true art” type questions.  Obviously all of us draw from influences of things around us.  So I don’t necessarily blame Pierce for the rip and reapply from successful predecessors, but the book also loses some points from the easy to draw lines.
• The Prince is a douche! He’s charming, but whiny.  Jealously loving, but weirdly controlling.  He’s trying to do the right thing, but not really.  Maybe he’s just complicated?  We all have dualities to our personalities that others are stuck with, so maybe I should be more forgiving since I’m no angel.

That being said, I already referenced that I’ve been waiting for book two: Royal Captives, so clearly I didn’t totally hate it.  Perceptive, dear reader; you are correct.

• I want to be a princess.  Not a Disney Princess that sings animals into cleaning for me (although I wouldn’t say no to that super power either), but a real, gritty, dealing with a Bachelor situation to win type princess.  It’s half the reason I started the book.  Obviously there’s an audience for this genre, I’m part of the target, and it successfully fills this role.
• Victoria is conflicted.  I like this.  She loves him, she loves him not.  She’s clever and looks for ulterior motives.  This makes her relatable.

I kind of started with my summary… Without book two, I’m honestly not sure this is worth starting… I’ll hold my recommendation on where I fall until I’ve delved deeper into this series.