Imaginary royals are not my characters of choice, and I hate the runaway bride plot. But I’ve read books featuring characters and plots that normally would send me running the other way that turned out to be keepers. And I do love romantic comedy. So I began A Thoroughly Modern Princess with my hopes high.

Emmaline is a princess from the quaint kingdom of Verdunia who is engaged to Remi, the crown prince of Burion. Remi is a nice enough guy, but there’s no passion between them. Verdunia is economically depressed but the American multi-billionaire Granger Lockwood plans a massive building project to make the kingdom more attractive to the tourist industry. A nice royal wedding is just the ticket to put Verdunia in the public eye.

Emmaline feels like a puppet whose strings are being pulled by everyone. She likes Remi, but wants love and passion. Her mother and father keep telling her that an arranged marriage (like theirs) will lead to love, but Emmaline isn’t buying it. When she sees Granger Lockwood’s hunky grandson, Granger Lockwood IV, she has one night of passion with him – and if you don’t know what that leads to, this is the first romance novel you have ever read.

Emmaline gets Granger to help her escape from her wedding and then she runs off with him to New York City. Prior to rescuing Emmaline, Granger had a big fight with his grandfather and lost his job and his comfy apartment. So he takes Emmaline to his new digs, a grimy studio apartment (he finds said apartment in one day – in New York City!). Can an out-of-work playboy and a spoiled, pregnant ex-princess find love and happiness?

Well, of course they do, as if I cared a whit, since Granger and Emmaline were not exactly dripping with charm and likability. I guess I was supposed to feel sorry for Granger since he had an unloving poor little rich boy upbringing, but any man who has sex with a woman, knowing that she is engaged, knowing that she is a virgin, and not using any protection, is a cad in my book. Emmaline is spoiled rotten and has no idea how the world works. Neither of them is obnoxious or bratty, but there is a total lack of chemistry between them.

The story is plagued by many niggling accuracy and/or continuity problems. Only a biology geek would get this, but there are no monarch butterflies in Europe. At one point Emmaline has trouble making an outside call since the palace switchboard operator is half deaf, then a chapter later, her sister gets a call on a cell phone. So Emmaline doesn’t have one? She spends most of her book either throwing up with morning sickness or gorging on greasy food, whines when she’s asked to help with a few chores, and has no idea how to do anything. Yes, I know that royalty doesn’t do windows, but Emmaline was too clueless to be believed.

Secondary characters pop up when they are needed to move the plot along, and then they disappear. Granger’s grandfather is a flinty old man for 99.99% of the book and then turns up mushy in the end. I don’t expect a plot involving imaginary kingdoms to have a lot grounded in reality, but I’ve read plenty of fantasies that were more “real” than this one.

Even so, the writing is smooth and polished and the story moves along nicely. I can’t fault the author’s technique at all, but the silly, bland characters never came alive for me. If I like the characters, I can forgive an author a multitude of storytelling sins, but if the characters are no good, all the technique in the world can’t save the book for me.