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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
medium-paced
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
I chose this for the ‘rolling your eyes’ prompt in my reading challenge. I thought I’d hate it to be honest but it was actually very interesting and I feel there is a lot more to the Harry and Meghan story than meets the eye. It certainly gave me an insight into other members of the royal family.
I did still roll my eyes sometimes so it definitely fitted that prompt!
I did still roll my eyes sometimes so it definitely fitted that prompt!
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
This is a brutally honest memoir of Prince Harry's adolescence to adulthood and a scorching condemnation of the British tabloids and the royal family. If you've ever struggled with trying to picture the difference between the family Windsor and the royal family the institution, this clarifies how these two disjointed selves (one royal, one individual) live inside each member of the family and how the institution motivates them to make choices out of self-preservation as opposed to empathy & familial ties. While I do see this for what it is - a single POV on a situation we can never know the full truth of- Prince Harry makes a compelling case for what he & Meghan were forced to do. His exit was coming from the moment the palace began throwing him under the bus as a child, forcing him into this dichotomous, binary role of "bad boy" to prop up the second and third in line to the throne. I only give this four stars because some things felt truly TMI and extraneous. Also thank god this man found therapy!!!!
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
i honestly really enjoyed this book. to the people saying it's "an exposé on the royal family", it's not. a good 70% of the book is just his experiences and how he feels about the things that have happened to him and because of him. i don't think he has a victim mentality and i don't think he's making his family out to be horrible people. some people are saying that these conversations should've been kept private but Harry has every right to tell his story. nothing is preventing any member of the royal family to tell theirs (unless they wanna pull the whole "royal protocol" card again). Harry spends most of the book talking about his upbringing, the loss of his mother, and his time in the military. but he also talks about his self destructive behavior and the numerous mistakes he made. it's not like he's saying he's perfect. and if telling his story makes the other royals look bad, it's because they treated him badly and never apologized for it.
as someone who's always found the concept of "royalty" kind of bizarre, this book definitely confirmed that royals are a different breed. At least, the one's who are in line for the throne. i understand that dating a royal or celebrity comes with attention and speculation. members of the royal family tried telling Harry that all their significant others had to go through the same thing. But it wasn't the same thing at all. Meghan's an American actress who's been divorced. more importantly, to the press, she was black. And the fact that Harry's family did nothing to defend Meghan, especially when the press was blatantly racist, is just insane to me. Harry also talks about stories that were written about him as a young boy that were untrue and his family did nothing to defend him. "just don't read it" seemed to be their solution to everything. i'll also never understand the fact that their was an actual conversation about how dark Harry and Meghan's kids would be. like god forbid the royal family actually has diversity for once??
i also wanna explicitly say that I understand Harry has a very privileged life (as most cishet white men usually do). that being said, i feel like i relate to him in a strange way. being the younger of two siblings, i can understand the feeling of being overshadowed by your older sibling and not being treated the same as them. and then to have those feelings validated by your family basically saying "yeah we had you as a back up". it seems like the only one in the family who treated him like a normal kid was Diana.
in one review i read, someone labeled this book as Harry's "villian origin story" and i couldn't agree more. i feel like he's embracing that energy. like if protecting his family and calling out the royals makes him the bad guy, then he's the bad guy. and i'm so here for it.
as someone who's always found the concept of "royalty" kind of bizarre, this book definitely confirmed that royals are a different breed. At least, the one's who are in line for the throne. i understand that dating a royal or celebrity comes with attention and speculation. members of the royal family tried telling Harry that all their significant others had to go through the same thing. But it wasn't the same thing at all. Meghan's an American actress who's been divorced. more importantly, to the press, she was black. And the fact that Harry's family did nothing to defend Meghan, especially when the press was blatantly racist, is just insane to me. Harry also talks about stories that were written about him as a young boy that were untrue and his family did nothing to defend him. "just don't read it" seemed to be their solution to everything. i'll also never understand the fact that their was an actual conversation about how dark Harry and Meghan's kids would be. like god forbid the royal family actually has diversity for once??
i also wanna explicitly say that I understand Harry has a very privileged life (as most cishet white men usually do). that being said, i feel like i relate to him in a strange way. being the younger of two siblings, i can understand the feeling of being overshadowed by your older sibling and not being treated the same as them. and then to have those feelings validated by your family basically saying "yeah we had you as a back up". it seems like the only one in the family who treated him like a normal kid was Diana.
in one review i read, someone labeled this book as Harry's "villian origin story" and i couldn't agree more. i feel like he's embracing that energy. like if protecting his family and calling out the royals makes him the bad guy, then he's the bad guy. and i'm so here for it.