The Frog Prince – Elle Lothlorien

Posted 2 June, 2012 by Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms in Reviews / 0 Comments

The Frog Prince – Elle LothlorienThe Frog Prince by Elle Lothlorien
Published by Selfpublished on 27 July 2010
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 360
Source: Amazon Lending Library
Buy on Amazon
2 Stars

Leigh Fromm is an American commoner, living in a trailer park, although she has a good job and a solid education.  Her best friend Kat is her sidekick.  Leigh is described as being clumsy and awkward in social situation, but she hardly ever seems that way when she is actually meeting new people or talking to them – or even being interviewed.

 
Leigh and Roman first meet at her great-aunts funeral.  What Leigh doesn’t know at first is that Roman is a maybe-never prince of Austria.  They start dating, and they both seem to not understand what the other sees in them – which is quite strange, since they are both good-looking, have friends and are quite successful at their respective careers.

Luckily our server appears, so I am spared from telling him that the research we do is all related to human sexuality, and that our latest study found that women with clitorises and inch or more away from their vaginal openings did not desire or enjoy sex like their close-proximity peers.
Uhm… OK… I guess?  I am really wondering if this will be in any way relevant for the story.

All of these quotes above are from the first 8% of the book, and I wonder if I will be able to actually feel the story at all!  I get so distracted from the weird descriptions, the randomness of Leigh’s thoughts and by the prose as well.  It all becomes an effort, like this is supposed to be oh so clever, but it comes out as being oh so forced instead.

Some more quotes :

Suddenly I am being scrutinized by eyes the color of Ty-D-Bowl water, and my cute comments go as flat as a day-old soda.

And unlike the rest of the female population, whom she refers to as “muffburgers,” Kat has never had to have her junk waxed.  Apparently she’s like a Barbie doll down there.

At one hundred and twenty years, the cemetery is old by western standards, and possibly has more trees in it than all of the eastern plains.
Shea is a lovely, petit woman-younger than me-with big blue eyes who appears not to have gotten the memo that it is not longer 1930. 

From the neck down she’s dressed more contemporarily in jeans and layered camisoles underneath a tight-fitting, short-sleeved blue sweater.
-how can Leigh see the camisoles if they are underneath a tight-fitting sweater?

I’m relieved when they move apart from each other, connected by only one hand with at least two feet between them.

I pull into the space next to his car, my heart erupting into a bout of ventricular tachycardia at the sight of him.

-yes, trying a little too hard, here

Still smiling, Roman takes a step towards the ranger.  In a low voice he says, “it’s because he’s black, isn’t it?”

This was about a dog!  And frankly, I was a little shocked at that kind of joke, I don’t think something that can be read as a racial slur is ever funny!

“In that case…that was the single coolest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do!” he says, clapping his hands once and then rubbing them together with undisguised glee. “Yeah, nothing says ‘cool’ like pretending to be disabled,” I say.

I just don’t get why this was relevant to anything at all!  Leigh wanted to bring Kat’s dog for a hike, and dogs weren’t permitted on the trails. Since Kat wanted to always have her dog with her, she had a vest for the dog saying it was a dog to help epileptics.  I don’t think this is funny at all – and it shows that Kat, Leigh and Roman are all pretty shallow IMO.

I am strangely touched by his profession, and fight against the urge to drop down next to the poison ivy and demonstrate my finely-honed crying abilities first-hand. I clear my throat. “You were in the military?”

I decide to forego explaining the black and white, slightly homoerotic photos of Mitchell in tighty-whitey underwear that are hanging on the living room wall, and instead pull him by the hand to the back of the house.

Roman has these dark, thick lashes like the cilia on a Venus flytrap leaf.  The deep blue sort of lures you in.  I peek for a second or two and become trapped like a bug.

My last thought is oh my god, does my breath smell like shrimp’ before my hypothalamus thankfully takes over.  Without it and the rest of my reptilian brain, I would probably never mate.

All of these quotes contributed to why it was difficult for me to get into the romance.

Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms

About Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms

Linda is an English as foreign language teacher and has a Master's degree in English Language and Literature. She's an avid reader, blogger, compulsive one-clicker and a genre omnivore. Ever since she learnt how to read she has been seen with a book or two in her hands everywhere she goes.

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