The Little Lady Agency and the Prince

reviewed by Gabrielle Pantera

HHH

Hester Browne created the ultimate freelance girlfriend-mentor in heroine Melissa “Honey” Romney-Jones. Alter ego Honey is everything Melissa thinks she’s not: smart, sophisticated and sexy. “I have Melissa’s practicality, and Melissa’s paranoia about how big her bum looks in skirts,” says Little Lady Agency author Hester Browne. “But I like to think I have Honey’s wardrobe. Honey and I are both keen on Vivian Westwood. I definitely have Honey’s collection of high-heeled black shoes!”

     In book three in the popular Little Lady series, Melissa’s latest job is to turn playboy prince Nicolas von Helsing-Alexandros into a perfect gentleman. Her fiancé American Jonathan Riley thinks that it will help make social connections. This Prince doesn’t want to be changed so is causing one problem after another for Melissa as herself and as doppelganger Honey. Is helping him worth it? There’s something endearing and empowering about a woman who helps men get their act together.

     “I'm quite visual and need to see something written down before it really goes into my mind,” says Browne. “I have a page in my notebook which is thirty different little bubbles. Each chapter has to be filled in and moved on to the next one. But when it comes to writing the novel I have to sit down with my notebook [Mac] and really type away. Because sometimes I find I don't get ideas until I'm actually writing.…loads of my best ideas don't even occur to me until I 'm actually typing the scene. The dialogue just sort of comes out without me having to think about it.”

     Hester Browne was born in England's Lake District and read English at Trinity College, Cambridge. “I love living in London because I didn't actually grow up here,” says Browne. “I find it quite exciting all the things you can do here….get a bagel at Bricklin Bagel Bakery at half past three in the morning or you can walk across Waterloo Bridge at six o’clock in winter and see all the beautiful lights and how it glitters all the way down the Thames. I still find that quite magical and exciting. All the people who live around here are potential characters. I love getting on a bus around Sloane Square and just going round and round listening to all the conversations going on behind me.

     The writing is humorous yet frustrating. Melissa should have developed more as a character by book three. Browne worked as a fiction editor before leaving publishing to write full time. In addition to contributing features to Cosmopolitan magazine, she ‘bakes a perfect sponge cake’ and collects bright red lipsticks and etiquette books.

The Little Lady Agency and the Prince. Hardback 384 pages. Publisher: Simon Schuster, (February 2008). Language: English. ISBN- 978-1-4165-3906-3 $ 24.00