Title: Red, White & Royal Blue
Author: Casey McQuiston
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin/Macmillan
Length: 425 Pages
Category: Contemporary Romance, New Adult
At a Glance: Red, White & Royal Blue earns every last one of its heart-tugs and includes more than a few memorable scenes and quotable lines—there’s absolutely nothing that isn’t romantic about, as Alex says, loving someone on purpose.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: What happens when America’s First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?
When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius—his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There’s only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.
Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn’t always diplomatic.
Review: Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue is one of the most hyped books so far this year, and, overall, I feel that hype is earned; though it appears my experience with it was a bit more moderate than many other readers. Writing a book that so closely toes the line of fictional realism is always going to carry some risks along with it, depending on who’s picking it up and what our expectations are of reading. This novel skirting around and also pointedly addressing the issues of my real-world political dumpster fire was a bit of a buzzkill that, at times, overshadowed my ability to focus on the romance. But, objectively speaking, it is also a tremendously engaging book full of heartfelt moments, and McQuiston’s voice gives vibrancy and life to the characters and their journey: two twenty-somethings who see the future they both want but are not sure if they can achieve. Readers get a front row seat to watch them fight for that future while living life in the public eye and feeling trapped by expectations. Ultimately, their story defines the word Love—the verb. This book is all about actively pursuing a future with the one person in the world who fulfills you in every way.
The enemies-to-lovers romance between the FSOTUS, Alexander Claremont-Diaz, and his royal highness, Prince Henry, encompasses the important qualifiers of the genre—a little happiness, a little heartbreak, a little hope, and a happy ending. Forced into a fake friendship for the preservation of international alliances, Alex and Henry get to know each other beyond what they’ve seen in magazine puff pieces, or has been inferred from incidental contact or observed on the internet. I love the forced proximity trope, and McQuiston’s on-point delivery of it in her debut novel leads readers into what becomes a true friendship and, eventually, a love story rife with difficulties and serious implications. Henry’s duty to crown and country goes back centuries and bears down on and hinders him in a way that Alex cannot begin to absorb, as his commitment to his own family legacy becomes less complicated with the end of his mother’s second term as president; if she wins reelection, that is. I could appreciate and sympathize with the complications this created and, of course, there’s the defining romantic moment when Alex damns the torpedoes and rushes full speed ahead to confess his love for Harry without much thought to what the implications might be for the prince. That moment was a turning point for Harry, for his relationship with Alex, and for his family.
Red, White & Royal Blue earns every last one of its heart-tugs and includes more than a few memorable scenes and quotable lines—there’s absolutely nothing that isn’t romantic about, as Alex says, loving someone on purpose. At its core, this is a modern-day fairy tale complete with its very own Prince Charming: one part fluff, one part romantic comedy, one part angst, and one part political wish fulfillment. The dirty business of politicking offers up a remorseful undercurrent for what might have been outside of this fictional world, and the message that President Ellen Claremont isn’t the president we got but she’s the president we deserve, comes across loud and clear.
The cast of supporting characters in Red, White & Royal Blue is robust and some standouts enriched the story with their presence—one senator in particular, Rafael Luna, and his role in the overall story made me want to read his book, and I would if McQuiston wrote it. Among the presidential staff, aides, and security detail are Alex and Henry’s team of supporters—June, Alex’s sister; Nora, Alex’s ex and bestie; Pez, Henry’s best friend; and Bea, Henry’s sister—whom I liked all-around. They provided a backdrop of normality to all the romantic entanglements and political consequences; though the media/paparazzi not dogging their every step, not salivating and pearl-clutching over the instances where they partied publicly, was, I felt, a noticeable omission. But, that’s where the blending of fictional realism becomes a line between author license and reader nitpicking—not a deal-breaker but it earned more of my focus than it was due. The press was used more deliberately, in another devastating way, though, so they weren’t given a complete pass.
Politics can be a dirty business, which is the pin-in-the-hand-grenade around which Alex and Henry’s relationship revolves, so keep that in mind if any sort of politics in your romance is a hard pass. Their story is a reminder that even wealth and privilege can’t guarantee a life without complications (although access to private planes and spontaneous overseas trips are a plus). It’s also a reminder that even a Prince Charming isn’t guaranteed true love; sometimes he has to seize happiness with courage and the conviction of the future he wants, and in that, the fairy tale promise of happily-ever-after is delivered.
This book was a nice diversion for me in spite of some of the things that kept me too firmly grounded in the reality that I rely on reading to help me escape from. In the end, however, Alex and Henry won my heart, always a plus in the win column, as I cheered them on every challenging and angsty step of the way.
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