The Palace Girls by Emma Royal

The Palace Girls at Christmas: The captivating historical novel of drama, secrets, and love, the perfect festive read by Emma Royal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 6 days

Pages - 354

Publisher -

Source - Review copy

Blurb from Goodreads

Buckingham Palace, Christmas 1952

When plucky young Caroline Stratton is offered a secretarial job at the Palace, she can’t believe her luck. Moving upstairs from her friends in the Royal Household’s staff is daunting, but she’s determined to make her East End family proud.

Then, just days later, her brother is framed for murder and arrested. Caroline is devastated. How can she help him, when she risks losing the livelihood that keeps her family afloat if the story came out?

With the Palace preparing for the first festive season of the new Queen's reign, can Caroline find the strength to trust her friends, and prove her brother’s innocence in time for Christmas?

This heart-wrenching, inspiring historical saga for fans of Downton Abbey and The Crown is the perfect novel to curl up by the fire with.


My Review

So this is book three in a book series but my first dance with this author/series. Predominantly set in Buckingham Palace, Christmas, 1952, Caroline is one of the staff taking care of the Palace, cleaning/household duties, being invisible when the royals need them to be. When a chance to move to be a secretary for the royal correspondence Caroline can't pass up the opportunity. A girl from her background always feels she has something to prove and this is another feather in her cap. When her brother is arrested for a horrific crime toward a local Caroline fears for everything, her job, her family, their reputation but she knows her brother is innocent and even if it means risk to herself she won't let him rot in jail for a crime she knows he didn't do.

So Caroline has a couple of pals working in the palace too, one is pregnant, Helen, and has some baggage and drama from I imagine the previous book and Milly who is getting married. I think the other books would maybe have centred around the other two and this is Caroline's time. We go between her adjusting into her new job role, the prickliness of some of the workers and some of the nicer ones oh and the Queen has taken a wee interest in her personality so there is wee snippets of the royals throughout.

It has a dash of drama, dastardly characters, friendship, families, life in the Palace, love and lasting effects from previous traumas. It absolutely works as a standalone but I will be going back and reading book one and two as I liked this and think I will enjoy the others. 4/5 for me, a few moments I was like girl what are you doing, NO! and others rooting for her, be interested in catching up with the other books in the series.

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