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My Review:Title: Red, White & Royal Blue
Author: Casey McQuiston
Published by: St. Martin's Griffin
Release Date: May 14, 2019
Format: eARC
Pages: 425
Genres: Romance, Contemporary, LGBT
Source: NetGalley
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2019 Diversity Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's 2019 Netgalley and Edelweiss Challenge, Lenoreo's 2019 New Release Challenge, Lenoreo's COYER Summer Hunt
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks ✩ IndieBound ✩ Book Depository
My rating:
Blurb:
A big-hearted romantic comedy in which the First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales after an incident of international proportions forces them to pretend to be best friends...
First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz is the closest thing to a prince this side of the Atlantic. With his intrepid sister and the Veep’s genius granddaughter, they’re the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. International socialite duties do have downsides—namely, when photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids and threaten American/British relations.
The plan for damage control: staging a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince. Alex is busy enough handling his mother’s bloodthirsty opponents and his own political ambitions without an uptight royal slowing him down. But beneath Henry’s Prince Charming veneer, there’s a soft-hearted eccentric with a dry sense of humor and more than one ghost haunting him.
As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. And Henry throws everything into question for Alex, an impulsive, charming guy who thought he knew everything: What is worth the sacrifice? How do you do all the good you can do? And, most importantly, how will history remember you?
I received a free copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review/opinion.
3.5 stars — Well….this book left me with very dichotomous feelings. There were aspects of the book that were soaring 5 stars…and there were aspects of the book that just *didn’t* work for me. In the end I’ll round up because the good parts really impacted me, but it wasn’t a slam dunk hit by any means.
Let’s get the gripes out of the way first. The writing baffled me. I totally get that I was reading an advanced copy, and so there was likely another editing pass, but I don’t think it was mistakes so much as the voice/writing style choices. Like, there were so many moments where I honestly have NO IDEA what the author was trying to say. Now, I’ll admit, I’m not a fan of purple prose, and avoid classics like the plague because I have trouble parsing the language. And I’m the kind of person that wants to understand EVERYTHING…EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN SENTENCE. So to say this frustrated me would be an understatement. And. The sentence. Fragment structuring. Like why? Why would you do that to your sentence? I get you’re trying to indicate pauses maybe? Or emphasis? But I don’t think it was always done correctly, and I think there are better ways. Now, I’m not saying the whole book was written in this style, but that’s what made it so confusing. I LOVED it when it wasn’t like this…when the sentences made sense and flowed beautifully. I just wanted the whole book to be like that. And I seem to be the only one frustrated by the writing style, most every other lower rated reviews are talking about other things (that I get, but since they’re not my feelings, I’m trying to ignore). This was my NUMBER ONE con for the book. If the whole book had been like this, I would have DNF’d as not a match for me. I’ll come back to my other little gripes later…
What did I LOVE?? OMG, I don’t even know how to describe it, but there were parts where I ADORED the bantering between the characters (when it didn’t feel like it was trying too hard). I fell in LOVE with Henry and Alex together. The chemistry was just amazing for me. I truly felt so many of their emotions, their struggles, their triumphs. The silly scenes made me giggle, the steamy scenes made me tingle (although I found it weird that the actual sex act was glossed over when so many other details were included), and the heartwrenching moments made me cry fat tears. I loved the friendships that were formed (even as the characters were very odd and could be caricatures sometimes), and the crazy antics they got up to.
Alex wasn’t always my favourite MC honestly — he could be really self-absorbed, manic, pushy, arrogant… It was a shame we didn’t get Henry’s POV as well, because what I learned of him I loved. And Henry is what redeemed Alex for me. The two of them together just made me happy. I loved their crazy conversations/emails/texts. I loved the deeper moments between them as well. The bits of light shining on Henry’s grief actually really affected me, and spoke to my own “teenager-losing-her-dad” heart.
All of those moments were just GOLD for me. What wasn’t as golden was the heavy handed politics in the book. Don’t get me wrong, if I was American, I would be a Democrat through and through…but I’m also not one for vilifying the other side, no matter how much I disagree with those on the extreme end. It glosses over all the ways that my side can be wrong, or heavy-handed, or not as righteous as they want to believe. And this book was polarizing in that respect. I also felt like some of the diversity in the book just felt over the top. I’m all for diversity, I started a fucking challenge for reading more diversely, but…I don’t know. Something just didn’t feel authentic about it, even though it was trying to be. It made me cheer at times, but then it made me pull out my skeptical hat at others.
So yeah. Long review eh? *shrugs* I think there was a lot of goodness in this book…but I also don’t think it’s quite worth the hype it’s getting. But to each their own.
COYER Summer Hunt: Read a book that is currently on the review link for this COYER — 5 points.
I read the short sentences in a Shatner voice, LOL. Also, I hate when Dems demonize the Reps too.