To Save a King by Rachel Hauck Review

 Good Morning Everyone :)

I pray today finds you all doing well, and I want to thank you all for joining me for another book review here on The Preppy Book Princess.

Back in 2021, I read To Love a Prince by Rachel Hauck (review here), and I completely adored it.

I thought it was such an original storyline, and I loved how important the faith message was to the overall story.

Ever since, I've been looking forward to diving into book two, and I recently had the chance to do so.

Keep reading below for my full review to see if this one lived up to the expectations I had for it going in.

To Save a King by Rachel Hauck:

Source: Library

Publisher: Hauck House

Publication Date: May 5th, 2021

Genre: Christian Fiction/Contemporary/Royal Themed Reads

Series: True Blue Royal

Synopsis:

A modern-day fairy tale of hope and rescue from NYT bestselling author Rachel Hauck

After growing up in small-town Hearts Bend, Tennessee, Gemma Stone set off to Hollywood to make her mark in the world.

But her ambition turned into a journey of a “thousand” bad decisions and after twelve years of seeking fame and fortune, Gemma returns home with a limp and a dark secret.

Now she runs a rescue ranch and is raising her friends’ orphaned daughter. She’s keenly aware these defenseless ones are also rescuing her. She just wants to stay hidden in the safe world she’s created.

HRH Crown Prince John has learned a royal title cannot shield him from heartbreak. As heir to the revered House of Blue and married to the love of his life, he believed his future reign would strengthen the royal dynasty of Lauchtenland. Then tragedy changed everything. Can anything save him from his grief?

When he travels to Hearts Bend on a mission for his mother, Queen Catherine, he’s drawn into the local life and cajoled into a three-legged race with the beautiful Gemma Stone during the 4th of July festivities.

While the event has a disastrous result, Prince John and Gemma form a quick friendship—one of two wounded souls finding comfort in one other. However, love is absolutely not an option. John desperately wants to hold onto the memories of his wife, and Gemma refuses to trust her heart to any man. Even a prince.

Then Prince John is called home for an emergency. How can he leave the woman who lifted him from his sorrows? But can Gemma join him on a royal stage and risk her secret coming to light?

With a touch of divine help, Prince John and Gemma just might find the kind of love that saves and ultimately write their very own fairy tale.

(synopsis from goodreads)

My Review:

Going into this one, I fully expected it to end up being one of my favorite reads of the year. I had adored the first one, I usually love Rachel Hauck's beautiful writing style, I'd enjoyed the bits and pieces of Prince John's character the reader is given in Daffy and Gus' story, and the synopsis sounded equally charming and intriguing. Unfortunately, this one didn't end up being quite what I was hoping for, and it fell quite a bit in my eyes from the expectations I had for it.

I will say that I did enjoy both John and Gemma as characters. I loved how they come together, and how they've both been struggling to move on from traumatic events in the past few years. They both showed such heart and determination, and I especially enjoyed the way their romance starts out as a beautiful friendship that soon blossoms into something more.

I also appreciated how deeply the themes of coming to God as you are and letting Him meet you there and do the rest were to plot of the story, and many moments had me tempted to tear up at just how beautiful the reminder of His grace truly was.

Unfortunately, I found a few other things with this one to be a tad off putting, and it caused me to take much longer to finish this one than I was initially expecting. First, I found the plot really dragged for a lot of the story, and it was hard to stay invested in everything that was going on. I found the "scandal" bits concerning the monarchy and whatnot to be kind of boring, and I struggled to get through those particular passages. 

I personally didn't find this one quite as clean as I did the first one, and there were definitely a couple of passages I could have done without. It was decently clean, but not as wholesome as I was hoping for.

Lastly, the faith element throughout this one was honestly kind of worrisome. I know some readers had commented on this with the first book, but I had honestly not minded it in that one. However, in this one it's expanded upon, and it came across as kind of a supernatural magical realism or even mysticism, and I'm not quite sure that was fitting for a Christian fiction title.

Overall, I did still enjoy this one, just not as much as I expected to. If there ends up being a third book, I probably would still read it, but it's no longer one of my most anticipated releases.

Final Rating: 3/5.

Thanks so much for reading guys! Have a great rest of your day :)

This is not a sponsored post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. The photo does not belong to me, and all rights to the respective owners.