”Romancing the Rough Diamond” by Clare London is part of the series(”Romancing the…” series), but it’s a standalone(so you don’t have to read previous books just to understand this one. But you can definitely read previous books just because they interest you 🙂 ). This book caught my attention because of the professions of the main characters. That sounded interesting.
Joel and the company he works in, Starsmith stones wins commission for royal gay wedding. Their job now is to make amazing rings for the grooms, and also gifts for guests. Everything has to be special. That’s why designer Matt joins their team. Matt has great ideas, but he hasn’t been working as desinger for a while because he doesn’t like the commercial side of all that. He likes beauty and making it, but not selling and business. Also – he hates Starsmith stones, because they bought his father’s company. But anyway, he ends up in a team and soon sparks fly between him and Joel. Everything seems to be great – he actually likes the project, making unique and beautiful things for this special day… But when everything goes too well… something has to happen. Something that threatens to destroy not just this whole deal with royal family, but also Joel’s and Matt’s new relationship. Do they trust each other enough to get past that? Do royal family trust them enough to ignore what happened?? There is only one way to find out.
I kinda liked main characters. They were different but had the same passion for beautiful jewelery. Okay, i liked Joel more, but that’s because i didn’t like Matt’s attitude in some moments. Yes, Joel’s company bought Matt’s family’s business, but… it seemed like Matt’s father and family didn’t hate Joel for that. That they were okay and didn’t think that Starsmith stones is the Devil itself. But Matt seemed obsessed with idea, that Joel just came to his father and took the business with force, that father didn’t want to sell but Starsmith stones just did something shady and evil to get him to sell and that they are so evil. And he didn’t listen when father or anyone tried to tell that… that was not the case. I get stubborn characters but this was just stupid at some points.
I liked the process of making rings and wedding presents. I mean – how they got the deal and then started to think about designs etc., all that process. That was interesting. I liked Teresa and Addam from Joel’s team too. Good characters.
The biggest problem for me with this book was the fact that not existing characters were connected to real persons. I mean – i never like when authors take real people(specially if they are still alive) and then make up not existent relatives to those people, like they are real etc. There are a lot of books about royals and in most of them – author makes up fake royal family for the country they want to write about. And that is the approach i like. It’s a made up story with made up royal family. Not a made up story about real Diana’s not existent daughter who now is the bestie with Kate. Here – royal gay character was William’s and Harry’s relative. Megan was also mentioned etc. And i don’t like that. I don’t understand why author didn’t just made up fake royal family for England and then run with it. Why make this all related to real people? Just like when other authors write about famous singers – they make up those famous bands for those singers. Not make that not real character a part of very real One direction and best friend of Harry Styles or brother to Lady Gaga. Of course authors can do what they want and i bet there are a lot of people who don’t have a problem with this. And that’s fine. I just… didn’t get it why that choice was made. But that’s me.
Overall – it was not a bad read. I read it pretty fast. As i said – i was interested to read about how they got from getting that royal project to actual end result and rings. I bet this would be visually a nice movie – gold, sparkling diamonds, making amazing rings. Very pleasing to an eye. And i liked Joel a lot. I didn’t hate Matt… there were fun moments with him, but his attitude in some other moments were not logical and annoying. What can i say – it’s a nice read for this autumn. Just tea, blanket and a book about diamonds and love, with happy ending :).
Bookshelf darling 