50 Shades of Cliché a Review for Paper Princess by Erin Watt

Paper Princess is the attempt and failure of writing a young adult (YA) romance. The collaboration between the two well-established new adult (NA) authors Jen Frederick, author of the Woodlands series and Elle Kennedy, author of the Off-Campus series. Under the synonym of Erin Watt, both produced a complete mess that reads as if the authors threw together the tropes of every NA and YA book they could find and combined them in this supposed teen romance.

Firstly, there is our 17-year-old heroine, Ella Harper, former stripper but innocent virgin, who lives with her guardian, loaded Cullum Royal, his gold-digger girlfriend and his family. His five sons, you could call them pointless, douchey, almost enjoyable but not really and the creepy twins, are one more disrespectful to their father than the other. Not only do they openly despise him and, for an unknown reason, Ella, but of course they all drink, party, do drugs and have sex right under his nose.

My heart stops. I don’t like the feral look in his eyes. He stands in front of me. Then his smile widens and he slides one hand insides his pants to cup his junk.
„You’re our sister now, right? So come on.“ He rubs himself. „Help a brother out.“
I cant breathe. I’m…scared.
But he is not really better than his sons and you have to wonder what kind of creep or maybe even borderline pedophile he is; when Ella first comes to live with them, the boys think Cullum brought her to live with them as his mistress. One of the sons even tells Ella how “He likes them young,” (like ew!) And obviously everyone blames the defenseless adolescent orphan for allegedly seducing him and not the 42-year-old man supposedly preying on her. And as if that was not enough, to fill Ella’s sad backstory it is mentioned that her mother’s boyfriend groped her when she was only twelve years old. I think using molestation just as a plot device should not be excused because people who where molested are often affected by it for the rest of their lives. And it doesn’t even affect Ella in the slightest as she turns out to be a real Mary Sue because nothing ever bothers her and even with all this baggage she turns out as “normal” as she does.

Of course Reed Royal, one of the sons, is our typical bad boy and Ella immediately falls for him.

„It’s really not fair how hot this guy is. And he’s got this whole bad boy vibe that I’m not usually into, but for some reason, it makes him even hotter. I guess I like bad boys.“
But his bad boy charm goes way beyond some tattoos, driving a motorcycle, or the general moody bad boys we are accustomed to. Just think of Daemon, Patch, and Jace, just to name a few. Reed calls Ella a slut, talks about how his brothers should not have sex with her because she is diseased and makes sure that everyone at school knows her past and hates her. And even though he is such a douche to her and orders her around, Bella never obeyed Edward as much as Ella obeys Reed. And then out of the blue he admits that he’s only acting like a hateful jerk because he is in fact in love with her.

Rather than stay in Easton’s cabin, Reed walks next door and gestures for me to follow him inside.
I stay put, crossing my arms. “What do you want?”
“To talk.”
“Then talk here.”
“Get in here, Ella.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
I drop my arms and walk into the cabin. Something about this guy…he issues a command and I obey.
This book turns more into a sexy comedy-drama than a teen romance, as the protagonists, their dialogues and the entire plot are just so laughable. If you can’t laugh about the book you might cry because it is distastefully sexist, abusive and overall just problematic. You thought Anastasia’s relationship to Mr. Grey was inappropriate, especially for young readers to read about? Well, Paper Princess takes inappropriate to a whole other level. The major plotline evolves around male dominance, chauvinism and sexism that is neither rebuffed nor called out and Ella’s experiences of sexual harassment and near-rape, as well as one of the brother’s alcohol addiction are never really dealt with either.

Generally, there is no real plot but who needs that anyways with all those sexy abs and a romance built on an aggressive, cruel and domineering boy and a very passive, sweet and innocent girl. The “sub-plots” are even more underdeveloped than the actual plot, but what can you really expect? This is especially true for the fight club two of the sons participate in that doesn’t make any sense and never even impacts the story. There are also way too many, way too detailed sex scenes in this book for it to be a YA romance. Although the characters are teenagers, the content is just too mature for YA.

So let’s list the major things that are wrong with this book:

A female protagonist with no personality.
The Royal brothers, who see women as objects that they can use however it pleases them.
Reed, the angry bad-boy that eventually admits he loved our heroine from the start.
An alcoholic Dad and his barely legal girlfriend.
Threats of violence.
Actual violence.
Alpha males and male dominance.
Rape and abuse jokes.
Slut-shaming.
Teenagers that drink, do drugs, have sex, fight in fight clubs and never get caught or see any kind of punishment.

Some of these tropes can be found in a lot of NA romances. But we have to keep in mind that the target audience for NA is 18 to 30 year olds whereas YA targets 12 to 18 year olds. Those young readers often do not realize how unhealthy and domineering the relationships these characters have are.

And not only the plot description and marketing is rather misleading, the cover makes you think of a modern-day Cinderella retelling. Therefore, I take all the complaining about the sexy, six-pack body covers of all those other novels back. They definitely tell you more about the subject matter. There actually is not a moment in this book that is sweet or heartwarming, it is everything that’s dirty, dark and generally wrong about the world.

The book is a real page-turner and entertaining as hell, because of all the highly unrealistic drama unfolding. But don’t expect any kind of inspiring story and be aware of the cliffhanger at the end that makes you want to throw this book against the wall (if you even make it that far). So read it if you are curious, its addictive for sure, but hopefully you will realize everything wrong with this book and report it to your local bookstore, to Amazon, to wherever, that this should be sold in the teen-porn or NA genre instead of YA.

I hope you liked this review.