What happens when a modern day Cinderella’s dreams don’t involve getting married?

Romance? Love? In this Once Upon A Romance Series Book 1 romantic comedy, Charlotte (Charlie) King doesn’t have time for either one. All she wants is her late father’s dream to come true by making his beloved King’s Department Store thrive again. However, her stepmother has other ideas. Charlie agrees to help her stepmother find grooms for her sheltered stepsisters. In exchange, the stepmother will release her stronghold on the store’s budget. After all, one good deed deserves another, right? But, Charlie has no idea what her heart’s in for when…

Alexander (Alex) Royale, dubbed by society newspapers as Prince Charming, arrives for dinner to meet the all-female King family. His ailing grandparents yearn for his marriage and then the baby carriage. Well, that and running the family company. Having unsuccessfully searched for months, Alex doesn’t hold out any hope in finding his future bride among the King sisters. However, all his expectations, including his idea of a business-like marriage of convenience, vanish the moment Charlie crashes into him.

When Alex sets out out to win over Charlotte, he has no idea he has to bargain with the stepmother, secretly buy the store, court Charlotte after the wedding, and, oh yeah, be featured in Charlie’s new fairy tale ad campaign, The Charmings, based on them. Can a guy ever get a break?

The couple never factored in falling in love with each other. Now, faced with losing all their families ever wanted, Charlie and Alex must choose: Do they live their families’ dreams or do they finally live their own?

This is the first book in the contemporary romantic comedy trilogy Once Upon a Romance

REVIEW:
This was a cute, light romance. Very clean, any age could read it. The hero needs a wife, time to marry and produce an heir. The grandparents, who raised him, want this so to please them he sets out to procure a wife. He visits one family that has 2 daughters, duds, but the step-daughter is the one for him.

She is some what of a free spirit, thinks outside the box, and appears to be a lot of fun. He is instantly attracted and so the story takes off. They eventually fall in love with each other in a very short period of time but each has their own agenda and she especially seems to have her own best interest at heart and the heck with anyone else.

He makes the ultimate sacrifice, selling his island home, his yacht, various other holdings to get the million dollars needed to buy her “dream”. Then realizing what she really wants, she GIVES the “dream” to the employees. I thought that was not generous, I thought it was selfish to take his money to give them something. Just give it away? I didn’t like that part of the story at all. It seems as though he did all the GIVING, she was doing all the TAKING. Not a good start!! But, maybe I took it all to seriously. It was a fun, clean, entertaining read and I would recommend it.