Review: Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

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? 

REVIEW

Oh my heart. Ever since The Hating Game I've been looking for another book to make me smile, laugh, cry, and hug my e-reader. I've finally found it. I'm completely besotted with Alex and Henry, and Red, White & Royal Blue is going straight into my all time favourites list. 

The premise is simple - What happens when America's First Son falls in love with a Prince of England. What we get is a fairytale full of all the romcom cliches that we know and love. Alex Claremont-Diaz, son of the first female President of the USA Ellen Claremont, hates Prince Henry of England. Henry is stuck up, pompous, devoid of personality. Or so Alex thinks. When an altercation between the two men leads to some enforced male bonding time for the benefit of the world media, what starts as a fake friendship soon develops into something deeper, and Alex realises just how wrong he was about England's most eligible bachelor.

The relationship between Alex and Henry is just brilliantly written - their banter is razor sharp, witty, and occasionally just plain hot. Their text and email exchanges serve to give even more of an insight into their feelings for each other, and had me grinning like an idiot (anyone who knows me knows I'm a sucker for this kind of character communication). The story is told in third person from Alex's perspective so we see Henry just as he does, changing from a stiff-upper-lipped emotionless Brit into the real Henry - a man who desperately wants to be himself, who is tired of pretending to be something he is not. 

One thing that I loved about this book was the cast of supporting characters. President Claremont is now up there with my favourite fictional mums, and Alex's relationship with his sister June is just lovely. Their best friend Nora is surely deserving of her own standalone novel, and then of course there's Zahra and Shaan, the real MVPs of the story. There's real representation of race, gender and sexual identity amongst the characters, and none of it feels forced.

It's worth noting that events in this book take place in an entirely fictional world, a parallel universe if you like. The First Family under President Ellen Clairemont do not exist (although frankly I wish they did), and nor do this particular representation of the British Royal family (and as such as a British Royalist I took no offence whatsoever- despite the misuse of titles and dubious succession laws). I say all this because I've seen some reviewers saying that this novel isn't realistic enough, that Henry and Alex would have a much harder time of things in the real world. Maybe that's true, but that's sort of the point. Red, White & Royal Blue doesn't try to be realistic, more idealistic. It's a truly modern fairytale where the Prince overcomes the obstacles and gets his happy ever after. He's happy, Alex is happy, the readers are ecstatic. And that's exactly the tonic we need in this current climate. So anyone wanting a hard hitting, realistic portrayal of the struggles for acceptance faced by LQBTQ+ individuals may want to look elsewhere. If you want a smushy romance that'll make you heart soar then this is the book for you. 

Even if you've never read any m/m romance before I urge you to give Red, White & Royal Blue a try. It's smart, funny, sexy and heartfelt. I'm obsessed.