Take a photo of a barcode or cover
anneklein 's review for:
Her Royal Highness
by Rachel Hawkins
1.5 stars
Good things: no homophobia in sight and LGBTQ+ rep in both main characters and side characters. Sexuality is talked about and treated in a healthy way by most of the characters, young people and adults alike. And it's good that YA gets these types of sapphic books that are simply fluffy and nice, the type of books that straight people have had available forever. The execution of this one, though, was lackluster.
I just... don't enjoy when books have zero conflict or stakes, zero characterisation, and on top of that they try to make me feel bad for a literal princess. As I said in one of my updates, books about royalty where the whole concept of monarchy itself goes completely uncontested are NOT IT. And on top of that you want me to feel bad for the princess because she doesn't know how to fold towels and gets her pictures on the tabloids? Great that she's a lesbian, but she doesn't ONCE leverage her royal status, class or money to do anything good. Or bad, for that matter, because the stakes are so low I couldn't care about anything.
And that brings me to the lack of character development, which was blatant and sad to see. The writing wasn't the worst thing about the book, but it certainly wasn't particularly pleasant to read. the pacing was fast but most of the plot happened in its last sixty pages. And you could absolutely tell that this was a US writer idealising Scotland and not subverting even one of its clichés.
Eh.
Good things: no homophobia in sight and LGBTQ+ rep in both main characters and side characters. Sexuality is talked about and treated in a healthy way by most of the characters, young people and adults alike. And it's good that YA gets these types of sapphic books that are simply fluffy and nice, the type of books that straight people have had available forever. The execution of this one, though, was lackluster.
I just... don't enjoy when books have zero conflict or stakes, zero characterisation, and on top of that they try to make me feel bad for a literal princess. As I said in one of my updates, books about royalty where the whole concept of monarchy itself goes completely uncontested are NOT IT. And on top of that you want me to feel bad for the princess because she doesn't know how to fold towels and gets her pictures on the tabloids? Great that she's a lesbian, but she doesn't ONCE leverage her royal status, class or money to do anything good. Or bad, for that matter, because the stakes are so low I couldn't care about anything.
And that brings me to the lack of character development, which was blatant and sad to see. The writing wasn't the worst thing about the book, but it certainly wasn't particularly pleasant to read. the pacing was fast but most of the plot happened in its last sixty pages. And you could absolutely tell that this was a US writer idealising Scotland and not subverting even one of its clichés.
Eh.