Review by oraclereadings - Red, White & Royal Blue

oraclereadings 's review for:

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

4.0

“Thinking about history makes me wonder how I’ll fit into it one day, I guess. And you too. I kinda wish people still wrote like that. History, huh? Bet we could make some.”

What I Loved:
✨Enemies to Friends to Lovers
✨M/M romance between FSOTUS (First Son of the United States) and the prince of England
✨Comical Banter
✨Actually Good Bi Representation
✨The emails lmao
✨Henry means everything to me and I will go to the ends of the Earth for him
✨The terms of endearment - Sweetheart, Baby . . . I am fucking dead
✨Literal queen Zahra

After a scandalous encounter at the royal wedding leaks into the tabloids, First Son Alex and Prince Henry must put aside their differences and are put together to stage a friendship as a way to save face. With his mother’s re-election on the line, Alex has to decide what is the best way for him to make history.

“You are", he says, “the absolute worst idea I’ve ever had.”

What I Disliked:

This didn’t have quite the slow burn that I had anticipated. Alex and Henry hit it off rather quickly and it’s not long before their relationship begins. Not gonna lie, I was hoping that they would spend more time “hating” each other. This went from enemies to fake friends, to real friends, to lovers really fast. If it were a shorter book, it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal.

I should have expected politics in a book that centers around the literal son of the president and royal family. I don’t know what I expected. I should have known. I was thinking it would be strictly romance and banter and gay. That’s my fault. I’m not gonna give the book any less stars for my stupidity.

The audiobook was just ughh on this, another thing I’m not gonna knock the actual book for. It just felt like sometimes I was listening to a podcast and I was so bored trying to listen and read at the same time. The perfect analogy would be to compare it to one of those reddit posts you see on TikTok that have an automated, monotone voice reading aloud while you watch someone jump through a Minecraft maze. Or the narrator for a documentary. Which would have been fine if this were anything but a gay, contemporary romance.

Representation: Alex and his sister June are biracial (White/Latinx). Alex is also bisexual. Henry is gay. Many side characters are also either poc, queer, or both.

See also: My review on <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4476093354">I Kissed Shara Wheeler</a>