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shewwimonster's review
1.0
Oh dear. POC rep is not good. Characterization is not good. Ace rep is exciting because it’s there but a little robotic. The ending is actually ridiculous and not in a good way.
Basically the book ignores all the complex issues or boils them down too much in favor of focusing too much on the relationship and the one character coming out.
Basically the book ignores all the complex issues or boils them down too much in favor of focusing too much on the relationship and the one character coming out.
briannareadsbooks's review
3.0
ARC provided by the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
This was my first Shaun David Hutchinson book, and it was just okay! I own some of his other books that I will definitely read because this book was pretty enjoyable, but it wasn't phenomenal.
The story follows Dre, the out and proud gay son of the Democratic presidential candidate, and his romantic relationship with Dean, the conservative son of the Republic POTUS. People go off about the Red White and Royal Blue vibes in this book, and I could definitely see it. It had a lot of the same vibes, and even a lot of the plot "twists" were the same, but this book was definitely more politics-oriented. Their relationship feels a lot more "forbidden" especially since their parents were opposing political leaders.
I thought it was cute and Dre and Dean both brought so much to the table as characters! They were both so unique and interesting and brought many different perspectives about the two political parties, but I don't think it was enough. I was skeptical about the author making a "There are nice Republicans, too!" point, and he didn't really end up making that point, or end up making a point at all really. It all felt sort of pointless at the end, and while I love Dre and Dean together, their relationship still felt really impractical at the end.
Overall, the book was cute! But it wasn't the most amazing love story.
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This was my first Shaun David Hutchinson book, and it was just okay! I own some of his other books that I will definitely read because this book was pretty enjoyable, but it wasn't phenomenal.
The story follows Dre, the out and proud gay son of the Democratic presidential candidate, and his romantic relationship with Dean, the conservative son of the Republic POTUS. People go off about the Red White and Royal Blue vibes in this book, and I could definitely see it. It had a lot of the same vibes, and even a lot of the plot "twists" were the same, but this book was definitely more politics-oriented. Their relationship feels a lot more "forbidden" especially since their parents were opposing political leaders.
I thought it was cute and Dre and Dean both brought so much to the table as characters! They were both so unique and interesting and brought many different perspectives about the two political parties, but I don't think it was enough. I was skeptical about the author making a "There are nice Republicans, too!" point, and he didn't really end up making that point, or end up making a point at all really. It all felt sort of pointless at the end, and while I love Dre and Dean together, their relationship still felt really impractical at the end.
Overall, the book was cute! But it wasn't the most amazing love story.
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swah's review
2.0
It was fine. Disappointed by the lack of any resolution to the political disagreements between Dre and Dean. Doesn't really feel like either character grew much. Also, kind of feels like the author forgot Dre was supposed to be Mexican American because in a book about politics that got brought up maybe once.
lib_laughlove's review
2.0
I tried to read this, I really did.
I heard in passing in a discord server I was in that this was a RWRB knockoff but I had never thought about reading it until today when I saw it in my library.
Where do I start. Uhh...well there wasn’t anything I really liked about it. The writing was ok, nothing astonishing, but not horrible. The characters were also ok, nothing really stood out about them. Their names both starting with the same letter were kind of confusing, and I had to go back and reread chapters to see who’s perspective it was in.
The plot was predictable. When the characters used the app “Prometheon” to communicate, I instantly knew that the messages were going to get exposed. It was kind of a lazy plot device too. “Totally secure” is a huge red flag for dramatic irony. We know what’s going to happen. App gets hacked, messages get exposed, yada yada yada. That single line took me out of the story entirely.
Additionally, the representation in this book was also kinda bad. Let’s start with the fundamentals: The State of Us is a book about two guys who’s parents are on opposite sides of the race for President of the United States. One’s the son of the democratic candidate, the other is the son of the Republican one. The relationship is flawed from the beginning. I don’t even have words for it, it makes my head hurt. But other reviewers probably say it better.
How the book referred to certain things was...weird? I honestly don’t know how to say it.
Um on page 145 Dre says, “I wish this wasn’t personal for me...Like, how can I be friends with someone who supports someone who thinks I’m not a person?”
Do what you will with that quote but personally, as a queer poc myself, I don’t think I could truly be friends with someone who supports someone who doesn’t view me as truly a person.
Save yourself the time and pick up a different YA novel with actually good POC and queer representation
I heard in passing in a discord server I was in that this was a RWRB knockoff but I had never thought about reading it until today when I saw it in my library.
Where do I start. Uhh...well there wasn’t anything I really liked about it. The writing was ok, nothing astonishing, but not horrible. The characters were also ok, nothing really stood out about them. Their names both starting with the same letter were kind of confusing, and I had to go back and reread chapters to see who’s perspective it was in.
The plot was predictable. When the characters used the app “Prometheon” to communicate, I instantly knew that the messages were going to get exposed. It was kind of a lazy plot device too. “Totally secure” is a huge red flag for dramatic irony. We know what’s going to happen. App gets hacked, messages get exposed, yada yada yada. That single line took me out of the story entirely.
Additionally, the representation in this book was also kinda bad. Let’s start with the fundamentals: The State of Us is a book about two guys who’s parents are on opposite sides of the race for President of the United States. One’s the son of the democratic candidate, the other is the son of the Republican one. The relationship is flawed from the beginning. I don’t even have words for it, it makes my head hurt. But other reviewers probably say it better.
How the book referred to certain things was...weird? I honestly don’t know how to say it.
Um on page 145 Dre says, “I wish this wasn’t personal for me...Like, how can I be friends with someone who supports someone who thinks I’m not a person?”
Do what you will with that quote but personally, as a queer poc myself, I don’t think I could truly be friends with someone who supports someone who doesn’t view me as truly a person.
Save yourself the time and pick up a different YA novel with actually good POC and queer representation
delaney572e4's review
2.0
Maybe 1.5 stars? It feels so hard to classify because, as you will see, there were actually things I liked about this book but also on principle I can't rate it high.
This review does contain some slight spoilers.
So I'm going to start by playing the devil's advocate because there were things that I did like about this book.
I did actually quite like the main relationship in general. I found Dre and Dean to have a pretty cute romance. Was it stereotypical? Yeah. But like, it was really cute, and I liked their dynamic. Which I was definitely pleasantly surprised about because I didn't like the romance in the other SDH book I read.
I also found a lot of the writing related to what it is to be a teenager and feel lonely and feel like you have to conform to certain expectations very relatable. I was able to relate to both Dre and Dean in different ways, and I really just got a lot of the intensity of emotions that teenagers have.
But, we do have to get to the other stuff.
As neither a person of color or an aspec person, I cannot comment on the book's representation on those regards, but the comments of many others have indicated how poorly done it was.
The way the plot wraps up was totally contrived. I saw the leak of their relationship coming, it was hard not to. But that was not the plot point that bugged me. The one that did was the part where four teenagers were able to bring down a billionaire tech evil-genius in order to neatly wrap up the plot. It tied the plot up in a nice little bow, but I could not bring myself to find it even remotely believable.
Then, of course, there is the politics. That is really, truly, the issue here. I was even okay with Dean largely defending his mother to readers. Because even though it was coming across a bit strong on the defense (oh, boo-hoo, is it hard to be a woman in the republican party? I feel so sorry for you) she was still his mom, and he clearly loved her a lot, and it's hard to grow up and learn that our parents are maybe not as great as you thought they were, but you also can't just stop loving them.
But in the end it wasn't any of those things. It was just the overall lack of a stance against the republican party by attempting to take them back to before Trump (even though they were awful then too, just not as outright about it). I can do something like red white and royal blue, where it is such a blatantly alternate universe from ours. But this book just felt like it was avoiding actually holding the republican party accountable for their atrocious standpoints. Over the past four years, it is incredibly obvious that the republican party is centered on trumpism. It is centered on hate and fearmongering, and its extreme right wing views are evident in the fact that there are actual republican elected officials who openly believe in QAnon. However, the book completely avoids this by basically making them Republican Lite and ignoring the existence of Trump and the far right wing overtaking the party. They were portrayed as reasonable moderates, who just have different approaches to solving things. Instead, the worst traits of the republican party were shoved into the singular third party candidate who was basically a mix of Trump, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos. And even though he is forced by the plot to drop out of the race at the end of the book, we have learned over the past four years that those values are not galvanized by a single person, but are rather a pervasive part of American culture.
Also, the republican candidate mom had a nice little speech at the end about loving her son which was like, okay, cool, but you're still homophobic and transphobic so I don't think that helps all the queer people your policies would harm.
Overall, it's not like there were any strong political stances in the book (except maybe conversion camps are Bad). It was some fairly spineless non-partisanship. If he didn't have a political statement to be made, then Hutchinson would have just been better off writing Dre and Dean's romance outside of a political setting.
This review does contain some slight spoilers.
So I'm going to start by playing the devil's advocate because there were things that I did like about this book.
I did actually quite like the main relationship in general. I found Dre and Dean to have a pretty cute romance. Was it stereotypical? Yeah. But like, it was really cute, and I liked their dynamic. Which I was definitely pleasantly surprised about because I didn't like the romance in the other SDH book I read.
I also found a lot of the writing related to what it is to be a teenager and feel lonely and feel like you have to conform to certain expectations very relatable. I was able to relate to both Dre and Dean in different ways, and I really just got a lot of the intensity of emotions that teenagers have.
But, we do have to get to the other stuff.
As neither a person of color or an aspec person, I cannot comment on the book's representation on those regards, but the comments of many others have indicated how poorly done it was.
The way the plot wraps up was totally contrived. I saw the leak of their relationship coming, it was hard not to. But that was not the plot point that bugged me. The one that did was the part where four teenagers were able to bring down a billionaire tech evil-genius in order to neatly wrap up the plot. It tied the plot up in a nice little bow, but I could not bring myself to find it even remotely believable.
Then, of course, there is the politics. That is really, truly, the issue here. I was even okay with Dean largely defending his mother to readers. Because even though it was coming across a bit strong on the defense (oh, boo-hoo, is it hard to be a woman in the republican party? I feel so sorry for you) she was still his mom, and he clearly loved her a lot, and it's hard to grow up and learn that our parents are maybe not as great as you thought they were, but you also can't just stop loving them.
But in the end it wasn't any of those things. It was just the overall lack of a stance against the republican party by attempting to take them back to before Trump (even though they were awful then too, just not as outright about it). I can do something like red white and royal blue, where it is such a blatantly alternate universe from ours. But this book just felt like it was avoiding actually holding the republican party accountable for their atrocious standpoints. Over the past four years, it is incredibly obvious that the republican party is centered on trumpism. It is centered on hate and fearmongering, and its extreme right wing views are evident in the fact that there are actual republican elected officials who openly believe in QAnon. However, the book completely avoids this by basically making them Republican Lite and ignoring the existence of Trump and the far right wing overtaking the party. They were portrayed as reasonable moderates, who just have different approaches to solving things. Instead, the worst traits of the republican party were shoved into the singular third party candidate who was basically a mix of Trump, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos. And even though he is forced by the plot to drop out of the race at the end of the book, we have learned over the past four years that those values are not galvanized by a single person, but are rather a pervasive part of American culture.
Also, the republican candidate mom had a nice little speech at the end about loving her son which was like, okay, cool, but you're still homophobic and transphobic so I don't think that helps all the queer people your policies would harm.
Overall, it's not like there were any strong political stances in the book (except maybe conversion camps are Bad). It was some fairly spineless non-partisanship. If he didn't have a political statement to be made, then Hutchinson would have just been better off writing Dre and Dean's romance outside of a political setting.
megatsunami's review
3.0
I enjoyed reading this book but there were a few bits that tripped me up. The "opposites attract" romance was fun (if not completely realistic... would they really connect that quickly?). I see from other reviews that there's been some criticism around one of the main character (Dre)'s representation as a Latino character who doesn't seem to have much cultural identity or to acknowledge issues that would likely , which I think is fair. It's too bad because I've always appreciated the author's representation of Latinx characters in his previous books and felt he was thoughtful and nuanced about it. Also, although the third party candidate was definitely a recognizable type (sort of a Donald Trump/ Elon Musk mash-up?) who I could totally see running for president, I was annoyed that the book portrayed the third party candidate as the bad guy, while Democrats and Republicans are apparently the good guys even if one is slightly less good than the other. Our two-party electoral system is so damaging, and the idea that anyone challenging that is part of the problem... is part of the problem.
kskana's review
4.25
Red white and royal blue but it’s american politics?? Just read red white and royal blue atp 😭