Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book has been so much fun to read. Completely unexpected feel-good book. Feel-good not in the unrealistic manner (except that the odds of a romance between the First Son of the US and the Prince of England would have a really really low probability of happening) but in a believable-oh-that-I-know-that-boy kind of way. The author has so carefully crafted the characters that you feel for each of them. When you’re reading their dialogues, you feel you’re right with them. When you’re reading their struggles, you feel that they’re very much similar to your struggles at the bottom of everything. When you read their feelings, you feel like they’re echoing your feelings too.
– SPOILERS AHEAD –
This book embodies a lot of Utopian things in a very eloquent manner that we almost feel like it’s real but it’s still far ahead of our current 2021 times - like having a female US President, gay prince of England, bisexual young First Son of US and to top it off the romance between these two highly sought-after public figures. Sprinkle on some tabloid email and photos leaks in background of a cut-throat Presidential election, you’ve got a nail-biter. For optimists this would make the book very exciting to read. (Another unreal thing - the story leads up to 2020 Presidential elections which we all know how it went with COVID-19).
For a brief time mid-book, after both Alex and Henry confess their feelings for each other it felt that the book dragged on for a while with their early-honeymoon-can’t-keep-my-hands-off-of-you-phase. Looks like the author wanted to portray the depth of characters and their relatively unknown facets. However things do quickly become exciting and lead up to an eventual meeting with the Queen of England. The supporting characters are just fabulous and their part in the story is absolutely heart-warming.
I’m simply going to wrap this review up without talking about the end of the story. For all the hopeless romantics, go ahead and give this book a try. You’ll have a great time reading this one!
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