Review: Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

May 14, 2019, from St. Martin’s Press
Adult contemporary romance
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5 stars

First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz is the closest thing to a prince this side of the Atlantic. With his intrepid sister and the Veep’s genius granddaughter, they’re the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. International socialite duties do have downsides—namely, when photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids and threaten American/British relations.

The plan for damage control: staging a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince. Alex is busy enough handling his mother’s bloodthirsty opponents and his own political ambitions without an uptight royal slowing him down. But beneath Henry’s Prince Charming veneer, there’s a soft-hearted eccentric with a dry sense of humor and more than one ghost haunting him.

As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. And Henry throws everything into question for Alex, an impulsive, charming guy who thought he knew everything: What is worth the sacrifice? How do you do all the good you can do? And, most importantly, how will history remember you?

This book. Y’all, this book. There was so much hype around it that I feared it wouldn’t live up, but I was absolutely hooked from the first chapter and it never went away. I would have read it in one sitting if I didn’t desperately try to savour it. Red, White, and Royal Blue plays off all my favourite romance tropes (eg. fake dating, enemies to friends to lovers) and some I didn’t know I liked, and all of it works perfectly. I loved every second of reading this book.