Book Review | Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Is it worth your time to read Red, White & Royal Blue, or was it just a Red, White & Royal fall through?

With the film adaptation coming to Amazon Prime Video in the coming week, I had to get this book off my TBR list as soon as possible.

About Red, White & Royal Blue

Handsome and charismatic Alexander Claremont-Diaz is the First Son of the United States. And then there's His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales. He's full of himself, condescending and an overall pain in the arse.

When The First Son and the Prince get into a public argument that threatens the relationship between US and Britain, their teams decide it's best to set them up in a public truce to straighten things out. Their damage control works and soon Alex and Henry find their friendship growing deeper than any of them could ever imagine.

Red, White & Royal Blue Review

Red, White & Royal Blue is written in the third POV with a focus on Alex and the American side of things, so I wished there was more time being spent on Henry as well. With the lack of Henry content, Henry felt like a character who lacked depth.

Even though we don't get to see his perspective first-hand, his emails and text messages convey a flurry of emotions. That being said, Henry is the definition of Prince Charming. He's hot, charismatic and a little flirty. He writes the most beautiful words and it's impossible to not be charmed by him and his poetry.

On the other hand, Alex is kind of an arrogant arse but he becomes tolerable as the book goes on. He also curses a lot but I grew accustomed to his dirty mouth. I'm giving full credit to Henry though for making Alex a better person by the end of the book.

Together, Alex and Henry are the cutest couple and I was rooting for them to work things out, no matter how bad things got.

The only other character that I have a strong opinion on is Zahra, the US President's deputy chief of staff and right-hand woman. I love her witty comments and her personality was such a breath of fresh air. The sarcastic and crude comments also made sense coming from her.

Besides the two main characters (and Zahra), I couldn't quite grasp the rest of the characters properly. Maybe it was too many characters, too few descriptions of them (or too many, who knows), but they just didn't stick in my brain.

Is there such a thing as too many queer folk?

Speaking of other characters, the inclusion of these people in the book felt forced. Many of them had similar personalities, which made them all blend together as one big side character. I think it's great that there are people with so many sexualities and colours in the book but it felt like the author was just trying to cross off all the alphabets for the sake of "diversity". It didn't feel authentic and real.

How much escapism do I need from a book?

The characters aren't the only thing that isn't believable in this world. This fantasy land where U.S. and Britain exists is too perfect.

If you could imagine having every possible negative scenario happening but then it miraculously gets cleaned up in 2 seconds—that's what basically happens in Red, White & Royal Blue. Everything was so easily resolved that there didn't seem to have any conflict or problems faced by the characters. Yes, they had to suffer for approximately 5 minutes but at the end of the day, it didn't affect them that badly.

The romance was great; The politics not so much.

As someone not from the US, the subject of American politics was very foreign to me. There was too much jargon that I just didn't understand, nor did I get an explanation of what those words meant. Furthermore, it usually came out preachy and a bit of a pushover.

I don't get how US politics work, nor do I really care about it. So to have it constantly being shoved into my face was kind of exhausting. If I wanted to know how Americans run their elections, I would have read a book about US politics. There's only so much non-fiction that can be in a fiction book.

Slow burn, but this was too slow.

Spanning 418 pages, the storyline felt dragged out and the chapters were unbearably long.

If you can swallow the US political propaganda they shove down your throat, you can get through this one.

★★★☆☆ (3/5)

The trailer looks awesome!

Despite how I felt about the book, you bet I will be sat for the movie.

About Casey McQuiston

Casey McQuiston is the New York times-bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue, as well as a pie enthusiast. They write books about smart people with bad manners falling in love. Born and raised in southern Louisiana, they now live in New York City with their poodle mix and personal assistant, Pepper.