Title- Red, White and Royal Blue
Author- Casey McQuiston
Rating– 3/5
Genre- contemporary romcom
Trope- royalty, MM, enemies to lovers
Cover– cute, not my favorite, but shows the genre
My emotions- neutral
Comments while reading-
Page 64- I started to get a bit bored with the politics talk, media strategies & such
Page 90-I could tell the author did research about the White House abs procedures to make the story more realistic and flow naturally.
Page 100- the humor was hilarious but overall it didn’t feel like much happened plot-wise. They were being strung along on day to day routine activities. At this point, I was a little bored.
Page 328- The scandals, politics, lies, and affairs just aren’t really my cup of tea. Negative feelings spark of manipulation & feeling controlled aren’t entertaining but just yuck.
I loved that Ellen was the first female president & I loved Alex’s biracial background with cultural references from Mexico.
Plot/Blurb-
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.
Best part- happily ever after
What I’d change-
I’m not a big fan of email and text as main forms of communication. Also sometimes the format is within a paragraph for the messages and some are shown formatted as texts on the page. Some contemporary novels have social media with Instagram and Twitter references, but it’s kind of a turn off for me as a reader. I’m not sure why but it feels forced and unnatural.
Pacing- medium
Cassie Swindon 