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Wickedly Charming
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Wickedly Charming
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Wickedly Charming
Ebook382 pages4 hours

Wickedly Charming

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this ebook

"Wickedly entertaining! Light, witty, and original, Wickedly Charming is also a wry insider's view of publishing and the heady delights of being a booklover." —Mary Jo Putney, New York Times bestselling author of Never Less Than A Lady


He's given up on happily-ever-after...


Cinderella's Prince Charming is divorced and at a dead end. The new owner of a bookstore, Charming has given up on women, royalty, and anything that smacks of a future. That is, until he meets up with Mellie...


But she may be the key to happily-right-now...


Mellie is sick and tired of stepmothers being misunderstood. Vampires have redeemed their reputation, why shouldn't stepmothers do the same? Then she runs into the handsomest, most charming man she's ever met and discovers she's going about her mission all wrong...


It's only natural that sparks fly and magic ensues when these two fairy tale refugees put their heads—and vulnerable hearts—together...


Praise for Simply Irresistible

"A sweet romance...Grayson's clever, humor-tinged writing is absolutely delightful." —Booklist

"Danger, humor, and passion are all here and in full force." —RT Bookclub Top Pick

LanguageEnglish
PublisherSourcebooks
Release dateMay 1, 2011
ISBN9781402248498
Unavailable
Wickedly Charming
Author

Kristine Grayson

Before turning to romance writing, award-winning author Kristine Grayson edited the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and ran Pulphouse Publishing (which won her a World Fantasy Award). She has won the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award and, under her real name, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, the prestigious Hugo award. She lives with her own Prince Charming, writer Dean Wesley Smith, in Portland, Oregon.

Read more from Kristine Grayson

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Reviews for Wickedly Charming

Rating: 3.549019656862745 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

51 ratings11 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    So I was really not expecting to like this book for many reasons. I'm a hard sell on romance, I accidentally bought the 7th book in the series (good job, self!), and I was really more in the mood for nonfiction than fiction when starting it. Honestly, the only reason I started it was because if I don't start romance when I still have it on my mind, it will languish on my to-read list for decades, and I hate to be out the cost of a book without ever having read it.

    But this book was, well, charming. This may actually be the first incarnation in which I've ever read Prince Charming where I actually liked him, but the middle-aged and divorced balding book lover is awfully hard to dislike. And Mellie is his perfect foil. She gives him the bite that he lacks, while he gives her the softness and empathy that she needs to get people to like her. (And I do appreciate those traits being applied to the gender they were.) I started off liking them immediately, and the book never gave me any reason to think that was a mistake.

    And the evolution of their relationship felt absolutely right to me. They're both deeply clumsy people at romantic relationships for very good reasons, and their relationship took time and probably would not have succeeded if their different passions hadn't ended up being compatible to the point of symbiosis.

    I did wish that there had been more drama with Ella, since the drama was brought up and then resolved too abruptly for my taste. But I suspect that that falls into my general problem with romance of wanting a plot that isn't about romance, so that's a problem that I blame more on my taste than I do on the book. I also wanted more dealing with his daughters and her once again being the stepmother.

    But realistically, when the worst you can say about a book is that you wanted more of some of its subplots, that's doing pretty damn good.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    It's rare for me to hate a book within the first chapter and I think this must be a record! If one is going to poach the characters and ideas of another writer, one needs to be quite good at creating a story beyond the characters. In this case, Grayson fails miserably. The story is simplistic, the characters are flat, and the writing is irritating (seriously, how many times does an author need to include [excessively I might add for the hubris is obviously taking over the writing of the book]all of these subtext of subtext asides).
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a fairy tale about a fairy tale, if you read it as such it is a good afternoon read.

    Cinderella's Prince Charming is divorced and at a dead-end in his career, so he opens a bookstore and travels the land ordering books and discovering new authors. Still handsome and still charming, he has given up on women, royalty, and anything that smacks of a future.

    Mellie is sick and tired of being called the Evil Stepmother. She did her best by her stepdaughter Snow White, but the girl resented her to no end and made all kinds of false accusations.

    Neither of them believes in happily ever after anymore, but both of them believe in happily for the moment...
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a really sweet romance between Prince Charming (Cinderella's Charming) and the Wicked Stepmother (Snow White's stepmother). I picked it up without realizing that it's #7 in the series, but some quick googling shows me that it's more of a shared universe than a series, so my usual dislike of starting in the middle doesn't really apply. (Google also shows me that the author is amazingly proliffic, under a wide variety of pseudonyms. Wow!)The protagonists here are really nice, and even better, they are adults. Charming (he goes by Dave in this world; it's easier) has two daughters who are the most important things in his life, and he acts like it. He is attracted to Mellie, but unhesitatingly stands her up or reschedules when his girls need him. He's shy, really wounded by Ella's bitterness and their divorce, and has always been a bookworm.Mellie, who is trying to organize the other unfairly maligned fairy tale characters to fight back, is so obsessed with her crusade that she doesn't have time for anythng else. She has also decided that books are the problem, without ever really reading any. When Dave showed her what the Twilight books did for the reputation of vampires, she agrees to try turning her own story into a book, and Dave agrees to help.Their attraction is real, as is their hesitation to act on it. I really liked, however, that they acted like adults. Mellie assumes that Dave isn't really interested when he vanishes into the fairy tales without warning, but when she hears that he needed to help his daughters, she immediately agrees he did the right thing and offers concrete help for them. Dave wants to spend time with her, but he only does so after he takes care of the girls, of his business, and his other responsibilities.The plotline pokes gentle fun at the publishing and book publicity industries, and is clearly written from the inside. Dave has ghosted Mellies best-selling "novel," and a rejected suitor (it's typical of Mellie that she didn't realize that he was only offering to help her with her book to date her) teams up with Snow White (who is livid at the way she is shown in the book) to bring the talk-show world down on their heads.It's somewhat lightweight, but good fun, with good characters who are worth spending time with.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    One of those "humorous" romances that I thought could have been funnier and more sexy times although the tension was top notch. But I did enjoy the playing with fairly tale troupes and also the romance later in life. Some parts seemed flat and some characters as well but the story was original and fun.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved this book! I've read Grayson before, but not for several years--just happened to find this at our local Borders yesterday, and since it was 30% off (they're closing :-(), I picked it up. A clever story about what happens after the fairy tale ending is over, this one just confirmed for me why I've never quite warmed up to Cinderella throughout the years. (I never suspected she was as bad as all this, mind you; I just resented that she always got to wear the blue dress when everyone knew that Princess Aurora's dress looked much better in blue than in pink.) I've long felt it would be nice if the family dynamics in Disney stories were a bit healthier, so I really enjoyed this story about an "evil" stepmother attempting to get her reputation salvaged. It certainly didn't hurt that she did it with a book, or that Prince Charming is not only a wonderful father but a serious lover of books himself. What more could you want?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I loved this book. Fun and funny and real, but with a nice sprinkling of fantasy and romance. Couldn't put it down, so I didn't. I may be a little sleepy at work tomorrow.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is NOT a book for people who want the fantasy rather than the reality. It just isn't. It's more of a stepfamily/survivor kind of book featuring people who are middle-aged and not necessarily perfect, physically, emotionally, etc. Also, I wouldn't read the book if you're not interested in the publishing world; there's a lot of detail on publishing in here, which I found enjoyable, but I like that kind of thing.My only criticism is that after all the roundabout misunderstandings throughout the first 9/10ths of the book, the resolution was almost too easy.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    My thoughts:I found this book charming and sweet. It was fun to read, and I liked her takes on fairytales and what isn't always told in them. It takes place in our world, but what we do not know is that there are more magical kingdoms in another dimension of some sort. Prince Charming left his kingdom, because what else was there to do than to wait for his dad to die. These "fairy-tale" characters also live for a long time. He went through a painful divorce with his Ella, it was not a match made in heaven. Poor Charming is sure charming but he is also a nerd that loves books (oh he won my heart at once there!), his hair is not as thick as it used to be, and as Ella pointed out his weight is no longer perfect. So he is a normal man, just still very charming, and I liked him. Then we have the wicked stepmother, yes Snow White's stepmum, though she is not as evil as those wicked Grim brothers made her out to be. There is another story there, and I did feel sorry for her and the bad rep she got. Sure she was a bit pushy at first, but she calmed down and I liked her. They were just two people with painful pasts and they wanted more to life.After having finished this book I did hope that Grayson will go back to this world and write about more characters. What I definitely liked was when they talked about the Snow White story, because it sure is icky that the prince wanted a dead woman, what did he actually want to do to her? Oh the story will tell you, the real story. Amusing and disturbing. A great spin to stories we all know.Conclusion:It was an amusing story to read. Sure they were slow to fall in love, but who could blame them. But it was there from page 1 so I just had to wait for that HEA, a more realistic HEA than the fairy-tale ones they knew by heart. I would read more by this author. At the end I was charmed, wickedly charmed.Rating:Quick read
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What I Loved Retold Fairy TalesThe fairy tale doesn't stop with 'happily ever after' in fact it is just the beginning of the story or in the case of our prince an the end of a hasty marriages and unhappily ever after. I love any version of retold stories be it fairy tales, Greek mythologies, or just revamped tales using characters from other classics like Shakespeare, Jane Austen etc... When I won an ARC of this book from Casablanca Authors I was so excited. Happy endings didn't really happen for THE Prince Charming of Cinderella's story and the "evil" stepmother of Snow White isn't so evil after all she just got some very bad press. The WorldThe worlds are all separated and and accessible through portals. The Greater World our world where mystical creatures are just fairy tales. Were people like the Brothers Grimm took the stories and embellished upon them, falsifying and unjustly labeling characters.The Kingdoms there are a few different ones up to 6 (I believe) containing their own things like talking mice, unicorns or flying monkeysTheme of BooksWhat is hotter than prince charming loving books and admitting to being a book nerd! But he is also physically still in shape with middle age man hotness and valuing his daughters above all else! Charming has a book store and goes to a book fair convention and he get stacks of books, that made me drool. The theme of the book is based around books and what type of impact they can have on society. Perfect for any book lover.CharactersCharming is his birth name, his name while he is over here in The Greater World is Dave Encanto. As I stated above he is a book lover and a good writer to boot, but a very passive man that doesn't like confrontation. He let his ex-wife Ella (CinderElla) walk all over him. You feel very sorry for this book loving geek with amazing charming abilities. Mellie for short Melvina the female version of Melvin. She has been dealing with a lot of lies and bad press her whole life and tired of it. She tries protesting but that doesn't work so Charming suggests she write a book and change the image of stepmothers that way. Like the vampires did from Bram Stokers truer version of vampires to Twilight's version of sophisticated polite creatures. The power of books. Mellie is a not a damsel in distress, but a doer and strong willed woman that won't let herself be labeled and archetyped any longer.RomanceA romance that neither of them are ready to admit to and they don't know if the other is feeling the same thing. Some times these romances are very annoying and frustrating and it was, but I completely enjoyed their slow romance. RecommendationIf you love any version of retold fairy tales this is a must read. If you love the different type of twist that authors will put on your favorite tales and make it their own, you got to check it out.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Full review appeared at Reader's Edyn on 05/08/20Mellie – Snow White’s evil stepmother – of all the reputations to be saddled with. If anyone knew the true story behind the completely skewed fairytale, they would have a completely different view of stepmothers. Unfortunately, those dang Grimm brothers set in motion some truly damning consequences for several of the people from her realm. Being a misunderstood stepmother, she possesses a hatred for all things book-related and launches a campaign to ban them all. But then she meets “Dave” who is really Prince Charming. Jaded by his own stereotype, he has come to the Greater World to escape the suffocating responsibilities of being himself. And avid book lover and self-professed nerd, he sets out to share his love of books with Mellie and explain why they are so important. Together they hatch a plan for an even better platform for Mellie to get her point made in a way that will bring attention to her cause – but in a positive way instead of a negative way. And unexpectedly, as they travel down the path of writing a book together, their attraction grows. But why would Charming want anything to do with an evil stepmother?Charming is besotted. Attracted to Mellie from the start, but horrified to realize she is trying to ban his most loved hobby, he sets out to redirect her anger at stereotypes in a different direction. After realizing she had no skill to write a book what-so-ever, they agree to team up. But writing the book isn’t the only struggle they have to overcome – others are lurking in the shadows waiting to strike. An ex-wife, children, a stepdaughter, spells, magic, a jaded coffee shop patron...the list is seemingly endless. Charming is less than confident in his attraction towards Mellie, but once they get past all of this other garbage trying to interfere with their HEA, he’s determined to show her how much he’s come to care for her. Care – hell, more like a desire to the point of distracting fantasies of a future with her.I have to admit I knew absolutely nothing about this series when I decided to read the book. I have not read anything by Ms. Grayson, had no idea that this was the 7th book in the series, and literally only read it because I was immediately enchanted with the title and cover. And dang! Am I thrilled to have made that decision! We’ve been seeing more and more of the “other side of the story” as time goes by. Many of those types of stories actually mentioned within the pages of this book. I completely enjoyed Ms. Grayson’s take on not only the stereotypes attached to the evil side of fairytales but how even those put on a pedestal can suffer consequences of stereotypes. In other words, things are not always as they seem: Mellie having a completely different reality from what was portrayed and Charming viewing his persona as a fate worse than death. This book has a little bit of everything – intrigue, betrayal, magic, alternate worlds, love, redemption – everything. Also immensely enjoyed was all of the inclusion of books, books stores, a book being written, publicity, a book for book lovers to be sure! I absolutely adored the intertwining of the world of books, a twist on fairytales, and a sweet romance.Ms. Grayson has a gift of being able to take something well known and completely remake it into her own creation. I found myself enjoying almost all of the characters presented, except for the few who were truly unlikeable. I was a bit taken back by Ella’s character, but given everyone else is so far removed from what is traditionally accepted, I probably shouldn’t have been. This book is broken into three sections – The Idea, The Rought Draft, and The Final Manuscript. This was an effective tool in easily moving forward with brief time jumps. My only issue was that toward the end, as I understood it, the time frame for a particular occurrence didn’t work. I don’t want to give anything away, but Charming’s last big hurdle and the negative press that suddenly surrounds the book tour all had to have occurred on the same day. However, this would not have been possible. Mellie should have faced her promotional woe a day later at the very least, but more likely a couple of days after Charming’s problem surfaced. Beyond that minor detail, I found the book highly stimulating and completely enchanting. Because I have not read any other books in this series, I cannot speak to if they are similar in presentation or not, but this format definitely worked for me. I plan to find out more about the Fates series in the future. For those of you who prefer more of a sweet romance and a different take on fairytale and the characters within them, tossed up with a bit of wit and charm, you’ve definitely come to the right place!Kindle version purchased for my own personal library.