Tarnished Crown (The Royals)

Ever since reading the Royal trilogy I needed to know Gideon and Savannah’s story.And as expected their story was filled with drama, betrayal, groveling, and teenage angst.If you like teenage drama, high school drama and break-up stories, this is the right novella for you. I should also mention that the original format was a newsletter serial, so there will be an obvious disconnect between chapters.Tarnished Crown doesn’t have the flow of a full novel. And it definitely feels like a novella, a little rushed at the end, and it’s missing a deeper character development. It also could have benefited from one or two more chapters about Savannah and Gideon after all the drama. Because the ending felt rushed.It shouldn’t come as a surprise that this novella had a lot of teenage drama. The novella switched between past and present trying to give answers to questions readers had since Gideon and Savannah’s former relationship was mentioned in the original trilogy. And it also tried to give Gideon enough time to grovel for what he did in the past.High school drama can be pretty annoying, especially if the plot follows every cliche imaginable. BUT, for readers who love these kind of stories, who devour all things YA drama and angst, this novella will be a blast. And the price is unbeatable.Tarnished Crown is the best example of a guilty pleasure read – lots of YA/NA drama and angst.

I’m not one for low ratings and it pains me to have to rate this novella so low because I love these authors. Elle Kennedy is in my top ten favorite authors and I effing love Jen Frederick’s books too. I also adored the royal trilogy, which was absolutely fantastic. While reading the trilogy I’d been very curious about Gid and Sav. Their relationship had always been kind of a black box. We knew the bare bones of what had happened but not all the messy story.So when this novella came out in installments in the newsletter, I patiently copied and pasted the chapters into a work document so that I could read them all at once (I’m not really into reading books chapter by chapter). When the hype died down though and I heard they were going to publish the novella, I trashed that document and simply jumped on this.And here is where the problems started. The main issue I had with it is that, even though I had expected angst, the temporal frames made it so that past and present were almost overlapping because in both cases Gid had to win Sav over, or he mucked up and drama ensued. Now, I’m not saying I wanted a happy happy novella, but they hurt each other so bad, so many times, and over a very long time. When he was trying to win her back, I was just rolling my eyes at his antics and thought it wad quite rude the way he went about it. Moreover, by that point I had already stopped caring, which was the main issue of the book. I did not care. The characters were bitter, not as likable as I thought they’d be, and I did not really care for either the present or the past story.Here is what I would have loved. Either seeing how they started dating, and how everything went downhill in a sort of a origin story ended in tragedy, not in flashback, but in all the vivid details of their first love. Or... just the story of how they found each other again after all those years. A fresh start. Sure, with a sprinkle of demons from the last, but this was too messy, too jumbled to tje point that in the end I did not care whether they got back together or Sav just showed him the door.

Tarnished Crown is #3.5 in the Royals series.This book was originally sent by email by the authors one chapter a week. It was also up on Wattpad. And now it's on amazon. I decided to read the entire story once all 21 chapters were completed.The story is told in alternating POVs - Gideon Royal and Savannah.The book goes back and forth between the present (when Gideon is in college and Savannah is 18) and 3 years ago (when they met/started dating).The book mainly tells us what happened between Gideon and Savannah. From the first three books in the series we know that there is a lot of tension between these two. So it was very interesting to get more insight into what happened.Much of the story takes place at the college Gideon attends (Savannah is visiting the school).I did enjoy this novella. But my favorite part was the present. I was a bit disappointed that we did not get more detail about how they started dating. IMO there was too much of the past in this story. I would have rather had the majority of the story take place in the present. And I was really glad that the last part of the book was all in the present. I don't really enjoy when a book builds up to a confrontation only to then spend all of the next chapters in the past.But overall this is a must read if you love The Royals. I absolutely cannot wait for book #4, Fallen Heir.

Yes the Royal series has completely ruined me as I delved straight into one book after another. In Tarnished Crown we get the oldest Royal brother Gideon’s story with Savannah. Since his first appearance in Paper Princess Gideon had always been the absent brother who kept things bottled up and kept his distance. His anger and hurt played a role in coming off as aloof, hard edged and standoffish. Lost in his own pain, wanting the only girl he loved but hurting her too bad with his secrets and betrayal in order to protect her led to misery and hatred spewing from Savannah.I absolutely loved Gideon and Savannah, the angst was all consuming and what I love to read in a second chance romance book. Whilst Gideon was a mystery in the books prior to Tarnished Crown, this book brings forth his character and you get to also see his sweet and romantic side as he goes all out to get his girl back.Now what I do want to say is whilst I loved the angst and Gideon trying to get Savannah back, what I didn’t like was that the author didn’t show a growth from past mistakes and them growing as a couple. So I’m going to say, authors please stop depriving our poor heroines of a deserved confrontation/justice /hea she deserves before forgiveness is even considered an option! Yes I'm not happy that you failed to show that Gideon could man up and be honest with Savannah about what happened in the past, which led to them breaking up. When Gideon is adamant he wants to explain to Savannah what happened as she deserved it, the scene was too easily glossed over with no real conversation taking place. Instead Gideon can’t man up and tell his girl Savannah the truth with his own words, he decides to continue to hold back and protect her, like wtf was there left to protect when he had hurt her so bad, come on! Grrr… Instead the author leaves Savannah figuring it all out for herself with no shouting or tears taking place! Yeah sorry but the author lost a star for that because she built up the angst in the previous books but then failed to deliver the goods.I’m so glad this was finally published on Amazon from Wattpad. I surprisingly enjoyed reading Tarnished Crown (had to skim past Dinah scenes) and loved Gideon’s friends/couples; Three and Bailey and Julie and Cal and really wish the author would reconsider and give them their own books…

After reading ella and reed's story i was so excited to read about easton, yet the book was so boring and bland that i barely made it through the first bok about him. i didnt bother buying the second one but when i saw this book about gideon and savannah i had to get it because i loved their story in the first few books. i quickly realised it was a huge mistake. gideon is completely different. savannah is completely different. its like the author wrote new characters but kept their names. it did not have the same feel as the first ones and is about a third of the length!! DONT WASTE YOUR TIME!!!!

I love these prequels as I love reading about the lives of the other brothers. There are so many more layers to Her character that is not shown in the other books, which was great to read about. (Spoiler!) I wish there was more to the story about them after they get together. I just thought it was quite a dull ending. However (!) still an amazing read!

This short story tells the reader what happens between Gideon and Savannah. Not quite as good as the other Royal story's but enjoyable and fills in the gaps nicely.

It's chic lit, meets Mills & Boon & Danielle Steele, not my thing at all