Reviews

The Royal We by Heather Cocks, Jessica Morgan

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carlisajc's review

4.0

*I was given an advanced copy of this novel to read and review by the publisher. This in no way affects my opinion of the book!*

Originally posted on Confessions of Carlisa | http://bit.ly/1PjEl1Z

This book. I’ve seen it described on here as Kate Middleton fan fiction and that description is spot on. It’s the story of an American girl, Rebecca or Bex, who takes a year abroad and studies at Oxford, where she finds herself living down the hall from the future King, Prince Nicholas. They fall in love, they kiss a lot, romancey things happen, yada yada yada. Basically the average girl’s fantasy. Except it’s different. Because life isn’t a fairy tale. It’s real. This story was 4 stars for me because it took that classic, almost-cliché story and made it real.

First the characters were so well-developed and this was completely necessary. It follows Bex and Nick through eight years of their lives and their relationship and if their characters hadn’t been believable or hadn’t been well-rounded, it would have been eight years too many. As we take this journey with Bex and Nick, we see every side of them. The bad and the good. The charming and the not-so-charming. The beautiful and the ugly. We even see these different sides of the Queen of England herself throughout the pages. The emotions of the characters are so sincere and honest to real life that they were almost hard to read at times. But that’s how life is. Emotions and relationships aren’t easy and as we experiences these eight years with Bex and Nick, we see that.

Also Bex’s voice as a narrator is awesome. She’s awesome and I love her so much. There are so many places where I wanted to reach through the pages and hug her or laugh with her or cry with her and a few times even slap her. She’s just Bex and she’s great.

I also just like how this completely throws us off of what we expect as this modern-day fairy tale. That’s why I like Into the Woods too because it builds what we know as a fairy tale and then completely warps and destroys all of those expectations. This is similar (though not quite to the extent Into the Woods takes it). The perfect magical thing doesn’t happen just at the right moment to save the day. There are no fairy god mothers or genies to grant them wishes. It’s just life despite the princes and the castles. This story shows the side of these fairy tales that we don’t often see. The honest side. The hard side. The real side.