My Fair Princess - Vanessa Kelly (Improper Princesses #1)

This was one of the monthly book selections for the Unapologetic Romance Readers group on Goodreads.  We tend to read a lot of historicals, and this is no exception, which makes me happy because historicals are my favorites!

The plot follows Gillian, the bastard daughter of a royal duke (AKA the Prince Regent's brother) who grew up in Sicily and, when we encounter her, is busy hunting down the bandits who killed her beloved stepfather.  Skip ahead a bit, and Gillian and her surviving family have returned to England, where they have enlisted Charles, Duke of Leverton, to help with civilizing Gillian so she can make a good match.  Why Charles?  Because he's apparently some sort of distant cousin; at least distant enough that I couldn't keep any of the connections straight.  Gillian doesn't want civilizing or a husband, she just wants to go back to Sicily, and so our conflict is born.

As far as plots go, this one revolves around a trope that I quite like: the hero trying to find the heroine a love interest, and then falling for her himself.  Charles as a character actually grew on me quite a bit.  Despite being rather bland and proper at the beginning of the book, he slowly starts to come out of his shell, pulled from his comfort zone by Gillian's behavior and the scandal that she stirs up.  Gillian, on the other hand, made me want to slap her upside the head.  She has her own desires, of course, but she acted like such a child, refusing to even see that maybe the way she was going about things wasn't the way to get what she wanted, or that what she wanted might not even be possible.  She dragged other innocent parties into downright dangerous situations, including a child who wanted to impress her.  When Charles tells her that she can't continue acting like that, she basically blows up and says that well, then they can't be together, to which I say, well then, maybe he would have been better off without her.

As for their relationship, there's a rather abrupt shift in it at one point.  In the beginning of the book, they kind of separately admit to themselves to being mildly attracted to each other, but neither is pursuing the other in any sort of active way.  And then, all of a sudden, they're all over each other.  It's not insta-love or insta-lust, but it's also not a slow development, and the switch felt like it came out of nowhere and made the pacing of the relationship just feel a bit off.  The supporting characters help to bolster the weirdness of the relationship, particularly Charles' sister Elizabeth, who was a wonderful supporting character and just the kind of sweet and steady presence both main characters needed.  Gillian's half-brother, Griffin, is also featured, and appears to be a main character in a book in one of Kelly's other series, the Renegade Royals--one of the books of which I have also read!

Overall, I liked this, but it was nothing extraordinary.  Gillian was an infuriating heroine and her revenge subplots kind of dragged down what could have been something absolutely delightful.  However, I would still be interested in reading more from Kelly in the future.

3 stars out of 5.