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ashleymartaza's reviews
14 reviews
Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
2.0
2.5 stars: I bought this book because I needed to research the genre for a project and this was highly reviewed on the internet. I didn't find it as interesting as I had hoped because it's basically softcore and politics. If this was a straight couple, I'm sure everyone would say the novel's mid, but since there's not much queer representation I can understand why there was such a hype around it. However, I honestly could not force myself past page 259 - I skipped to the end and found that it wasn't worth finishing.
The main romance... isn't much of a romance. They have sex 1/3 of the way into the book - yes, you heard me right: 1/3 - and then they keep doing it on the down low until one of them has drama in their life so they call the other and/or have sex about it. It's like every other chapter for half the book and I legit skipped so many pages because no one warned me about it or just how much of it there would be! And it doesn't help that neither character really got enough time away from the "romance" to be built up as an interesting person.
I do think Alex contains multitudes, but he's still boring as a character to me. He goes on and on (and on) about several things: his hate boner for Henry, his need for making lists, Texas, and American political history... I love enemies to lovers, but this is so one-sided it's ridiculous. As a Texan myself, it's not even all that -- Alex could use deeper reasons for his nostalgia other than "I used to live there :(". And the history/politics is... Quite a bit, even though I'm left leaning like the MC. Definitely be prepared to hear a lot of politics instead of romance.
Overall, I think that McQuiston focused way too much on random flits of conflict that doesn't end up amounting to anything when they could have spent more time fleshing the main interests out. I kept finding myself seeing these two finally open up and going "Here it is!!" only to have the book essentially say "and [MC] fills [other MC] in about his [hardship]" what... You can't say there's a show and then only tell me the summary. How can someone write so much about so little?
In the end, I think most of this book's failings can be chalked up to: weirdly fast paced writing, too many non-thematic conflicts followed by glossed over should-be conflicts, and most readers being unable to closely relate to living in such a pressurized spotlight. It might be that RW&RB is too niche, but to me it also feels like I'm reading second or third draft that McQuiston had sent in to their editors and I think they could have benefited from taking another stab or two at polishing it.
The main romance... isn't much of a romance. They have sex 1/3 of the way into the book - yes, you heard me right: 1/3 - and then they keep doing it on the down low until one of them has drama in their life so they call the other and/or have sex about it. It's like every other chapter for half the book and I legit skipped so many pages because no one warned me about it or just how much of it there would be! And it doesn't help that neither character really got enough time away from the "romance" to be built up as an interesting person.
I do think Alex contains multitudes, but he's still boring as a character to me. He goes on and on (and on) about several things: his hate boner for Henry, his need for making lists, Texas, and American political history... I love enemies to lovers, but this is so one-sided it's ridiculous. As a Texan myself, it's not even all that -- Alex could use deeper reasons for his nostalgia other than "I used to live there :(". And the history/politics is... Quite a bit, even though I'm left leaning like the MC. Definitely be prepared to hear a lot of politics instead of romance.
Overall, I think that McQuiston focused way too much on random flits of conflict that doesn't end up amounting to anything when they could have spent more time fleshing the main interests out. I kept finding myself seeing these two finally open up and going "Here it is!!" only to have the book essentially say "and [MC] fills [other MC] in about his [hardship]" what... You can't say there's a show and then only tell me the summary. How can someone write so much about so little?
In the end, I think most of this book's failings can be chalked up to: weirdly fast paced writing, too many non-thematic conflicts followed by glossed over should-be conflicts, and most readers being unable to closely relate to living in such a pressurized spotlight. It might be that RW&RB is too niche, but to me it also feels like I'm reading second or third draft that McQuiston had sent in to their editors and I think they could have benefited from taking another stab or two at polishing it.
11 Birthdays by Wendy Mass
4.0
Great book (and author) for younger children! I read through most of Wendy's works while I was in middle school and I loved this one so much
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