Chris's Reviews > Red, White & Royal Blue

This is such a wholesome book, I mean as wholesome as a book can get with a several semi-graphic sex scenes.

It's just a nice escape from reality, imagining a world where a female politician from Texas won the 2016 US election, a world with a slightly different British Royal family.

It's a cute concept, the son of the President realises his hate boner for a British Prince is actually just a regular boner. As it turns out, the feelings are mutual and so begins their love affair.

Firstly, I really like the characters. The protagonist Alex has a tendency to be an insufferable douchebag at times, but there are enough characters to call him out on it that it doesn't become annoying. Prince Henry is adorably British and it's easy to see why Alex's hate turned to something more positive. The supporting characters are fairly well rounded too, from Alex's sister June to their BFF Nora (grand daughter of the Vice President) and their parents.

For a mostly light hearted young adult novel, Casey McQuiston tackles a lot of very real world issues about sexuality, gender politics, racism, among others. Even an offhand comment from a character about how straight people love to incorrectly claim that homophobia is mostly just closeted people not being able to come to terms with their own sexuality.

There are times it borders on fantasy, because while it's grounded in some kind of real world, but there are certain elements that sadly wouldn't actually happen, but it's nice to imagine it for awhile. This book doesn't need to be entirely realistic as long as it doesn't break the internal logic of the book.

The dialogue made me laugh out loud several times, from the cute instant message banter between Henry and Alex, to Deputy Chief of Staff Zahra's outright hostility towards Alex to President Claremont's very special talk with Alex using a powerpoint presentation.

It's just a really nice book, something I desperately needed right now, and I think the best way to end this review is to quote McQuiston in the acknowledgments:

"What I hoped to do, and what I hope I have done with this book by the time you've finished it, my dear reader, is to be a spark of joy and hope you needed."

Mission accomplished.