2020: #23 – Red, White & Royal Blue (Casey McQuiston)

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Published by St. Martin's Griffin on May 14, 2020
Genres: new adult, romance
Pages: 432


Also by this author: One Last Stop

What happens when America's First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?
 
When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius—his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.
 
Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn't always diplomatic.

This was a solid contemporary romance where the bisexual son of the first woman President of the United States falls in love with a Prince of England, and difficulties ensue. There is a lot of politics sprinkled throughout the story, but it doesn’t pull away from the charm. I would absolutely read a sequel to this.

I read this for the PopSugar Reading Challenge this year — this book fulfilled the “book with a pink cover” prompt.

Other reviews:

• “After reading this book, here are my thoughts: I am emotionally spent. I have no more life left in me. I don’t know how I’ll be able to read another book after this because my heart is stuck in the imaginary 2020 Presidential campaign of a Texan woman, nestled between two stubborn and loveable boys, and I simply cannot face another novel with different characters. I only want to reread Red, White & Royal Blue.” – the bookish brunette
• “So there’s a lot about politics and societal expectations and how opinion is molded and often outdated. But, in the midst of all, we get to see Henry’s and Alex’s relationship bloom. And what a beautiful thing that is. It’s heartfelt and pure, it’s sexy and sweet, it’s everything. Those two filled my heart and I just wanted to yell at everyone that love is love and people deserve to be loved without judgment.” – Lazy Book Conqueror
• “The best bit of Red, White and Royal Blue was all the secrecy, I loved that part of the story and I was constantly on the edge of my seat wondering whether they were going to be exposed and how. I also loved the way they dealt with grief and explained grief all the way through this book, in general, mental illness was really well handled and I loved learning about the coping mechanisms they had that worked and didn’t work.” – The Book Blog Life