Red, White & Royal Blue – Casey McQuiston
St. Martin's Griffin | Paperback | May 14, 2019
Red, White & Royal Blue is set in an alternative reality where the Democrats won the 2016 election, America has its first female president, and one of England’s princes is still single. Alex Claremont-Diaz is the First Son of the United States. He is passionate about politics and despising his “arch-nemesis” Prince Henry of Wales. The rivalry comes to a head at Henry’s brother’s wedding, where a fist fight results in a $75,000 disaster. To pacify the media, the countries fabricate a friendship between Alex and Henry. But their artificial friendship soon turns into a bromance and eventually into a full-blown romance.
The first half of McQuinston’s debut rom-com is more of a romp-com, filled with international sexcapades, grand parties, and flirtatious banter. In between some pretty cliché parts of the whirl-wind romance, there are a few heartfelt moments where Alex comes to terms with his sexuality and begins to open up to his family and friends about it. He also begins to take on more political responsibilities on his mother’s reelection campaign and begins his career in politics.
It isn’t until the latter half of the novel when Alex and Henry’s love emails are leaked to the press, that McQuinston finally flips the lid on the traditional rom-com. With the same sharp wit and dynamic dialogue she uses in the first half, she steamrolls forward. In the midst of a heated reelection and against the conservative views of the monarchy, Alex and Henry, as well as their family and friends must decide: sweep the relationship under the rug and let it die, or shove expectations aside and fight for love. It’s a refreshing romance that unabashedly instills hope in the power of love and what tomorrow may bring.
