With True Love's Kiss - Jessica Woodard (Once Upon a Romance #3)

Let me preface this by saying that I have read Jessica Woodard's other two "Once Upon a Romance" books, and I enjoyed them quite a bit.  The Scottish accents in the second book were almost enough to drive me mad, because reading Scottish accents (or most accents, actually) is agonizing.  However, I still liked them.  And honestly, I liked this one, to...

...just not as much as I wanted to.  The main issue I found with this story was Bianca.  She's cute, she's charming, she's endearing, she's kind, she wants the best for her people...and she is completely and utterly boring.  Robin was cool.  I liked Robin.  I liked Queen Isabella, and I enjoyed the returning characters from other books.  But Bianca, as the main heroine, was just bland.  While I wanted her to succeed, I was simultaneously left feeling like I didn't care if she did or not.  In fact, if she failed, that would have opened up a whole new can of worms, which could have been quite interesting.

The ending wasn't my cup of tea, either.  It wasn't nearly as emotional as it could have been, and while it paves the way for future books, it didn't make me actually care about Robin and Bianca any more.  It felt more like a cop out than anything else.  I'm still interested in reading future books from Woodard, but I hope she returns to a style more like the first two books in the series.  I'm not sure how she'll do that, as I suspect the next book is Sleeping Beauty-themed, and it's kind of hard to make a girl who sleeps for most of the story into a great heroine, but I hope Woodard will manage.

Two out of five stars.