Red, White & Royal Blue

- Casey McQuiston

GOODREADS 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.

GENRES:

FIRST WORDS:

On the White House roof, tucked into a corner of the Promenade, there’s a bit of loose paneling right on the edge of the Solarium. If you tap it just right, you can peel it back enough to find a message etched underneath, with the tip of a key or maybe a stolen West Wing letter opener.

MY REVIEW:

absolute favourite:
5/5

I was not emotionally prepared for the perfection of Red, White & Royal Blue.

Honestly, you want to hate Alex because he’s so damn obnoxious. Cocky and driven and so sure all the time. But the more he shows up, and you discover an openness and a sense of vulnerability that is so lovable, you forgive his shortcomings. Because the way he steps up for those he loves is everything you could want in a person.

From the beginning, I was obsessed with Henry. His stiff upper lip, the whole British monarchy thing - he plays it to a fucking tee. But the amount of anxiety, pain, and fear that his façade is covering is deeply heartbreaking. And when you catch glimpses of the true Henry, you want to hug him and fix everything for him.

This book gets so much deeper than I expected. It is achingly sweet (their emails?!) and literally laugh-out-loud funny (their emails!), but it never loses its heart. These two young men are falling in love, finding themselves and their place in the world, and trying to just be okay. I could be laughing one page and crying the next, and it felt honest and good and everything you want love and family and friendship (and even politics) to be.

I wanted to give this four and a half stars, or even just four, because ‘it’s only a romance novel’, but I sat down after work and could not put this book down until I finished it. Red, White & Royal Blue is absolute perfection and deserves nothing less than five stars.

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