** spoiler alert ** An unsatisfying, inconsistent, and ultimately boring take on the prince and the pauper. Interestingly I found the first third of the book to be an amazing read: the main character is an anxious wreck and this is so well written. I was so extremely excited to recommend this book based on the strength of the voice. And then... that character... disappears.

You see, at a third of the way through, the anxious main character has a moment where she fails utterly. The male lead shames her for it. And immediately the main character, up to this point an anxious wreck... decides that she can handle anything! And lo! Now she's perfect at everything! And the male lead, literally described as the sexiest man in the world, who has been up to this point completely cold and distant towards our main character... falls totally transparently in love with her! From this point on the book oscillates between mere hints of self doubt and complete wish fulfillment fiction at a tempo that defies belief. The book has lost not only its amazing anxious voice but also any sense of consistency.

It's not just the leads that are inconsistent. The background characters likewise are flit between roles as necessary to meet the needs of the main. You would assume that at least the early onset Alzheimer's mother would remain consistent, but no: after an entire book of saying barely anything at all, she suddenly drops paragraphs of exposition in the final act to reveal... exactly the truth bomb that the author has already bludgeoned us over the head with. I rolled my eyes right out of my head when I read that.

The final 70 pages were a slog to get through. It was very nearly a dnf; a rare thing for me. But I will give it 2 stars for that amazing anxious voice first third.

This started off with a great set up and premise. But at some point the book starts to drag and I didn't really care by the end. Gracie struggles at the beginning in an interesting way, but then suddenly she has this amazing growth and is strong and confident and everything is easy for her. There's a couple of twists that I saw coming, and everything came together almost too well. Also, I didn't really care for the way that the creepy stuff with the boss was written. The romance was cute though.