Title: Red, White, and Royal Blue
Author: Casey McQuiston
Format: Paperback
Rating: 4.5 Stars
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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.
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I picked up Red, White, and Royal Blue after hearing so much about it on blogs, booktube, and the twitter. I was not disappointed.
I can't really think of anything I didn't like about this book. The whole story was well developed and well plotted. I liked the characters, the humor and candor between them, and the way each character played so well off each other.
This book is full of humor, heart, and love. Henry, the stuffy prince of Wales, even brings his own moments of levity to his stuffy life as a prince and future king. Alex, the son of the woman president (YEAH), is very over achieving, and despite his seriousness about becoming a future politician and his heavy drive to do nothing else, he is just great and funny!
Henry and Alex really felt good together. They have similar personalities, and they mesh well because of it. I feel like it helps that they also are raised with a lot of expectations of what they will become, and they can bond over that because the know what they really want to become, and they (I think) both struggle with how to break free of expectations and do what they want.
Alex, his sister, and Nora all worked together well as well. I could say this about all the characters in this book. You could tell the three of them had a great relationship with each other, part of which I am sure came from having parents who are so much in the political spotlight. There really weren't any characters that felt off or out of place. They all had their own distinct personalities that meshed, and traits that worked with other characters traits. Each character developed well, and grew as the story unfolded.
The whole story felt so well-developed and well written. I admit I did question one moment where Alex was told he *had* to be friends with Henry in order to make up for his mishap in England, because I thought "Huh, would he really do that?" Alex is pretty strong willed, but after I thought about it and really got into the book, I felt like it worked. Everything in this book was just on par and wonderful.
Overall, this was a great book with lots of romance, lots of great friendship, and a wonderful well developed story. One last thing that should be noted: This is NOT A YA book. A lot of people have been confused about that, so I just wanted to add that.
