This whole book was very adorable and cute. I loved the way that both Alex and Henry interacted with each other, and it wasn’t as sexual as I thought it was going to be (which is a good this)

Over all I LOVED this book, and when it officially comes out I will be buying the physical copy and read it again!

Wow! Wasn't expecting this story line, or to get so invested so quickly! I like how the author set up the story as having the leads as enemies and forced to interact due to their political families.

I predict this m/m rom-com will be making an appearance on many summer reading lists. This book was pure fun! A romance between former frenemies Alex, the FSOTUS and Henry, the Prince of Wales that threatens to throw both of their countries into chaos, makes for a funny and surprisingly poignant read. If you need a break from the current political climate, this is the book for you! Bonus points to McQuiston for the fun tidbits of queer history in the epistolary parts of the book.

Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the review copy.

This is hands-down the best book I've read this year. Red, White & Royal Blue was one of my most anticipated releases of the year, but I wasn't disappointed at all!

I absolutely fell in love with these characters. Henry and Alex both have very distinct personalities, but somehow they work together. They complete each other. I grew to care about these characters so much that finishing the book made me sad. I was left beginning for more.

At first, I struggled a bit with the pacing. We were getting little moments here and there, and sometimes we were missing the link between certain scenes. However, I quickly adapted and it became evident that these scenes weren't there for nothing. We were building up to something, but I just hadn't seen the bigger picture yet. In the end, I ended up loving the story so much. I simply couldn't put the book down. I became so enthralled with this world and these characters that it left me wishing this was real.

This book has made it to my list of all-time favorites and I cannot wait to get my hands on a physical copy. Everyone should read it!

I absolutely adored this book! Laugh out loud funny, interesting characters, and fascinating locations. Feels very much in the same vein as The Royal We, which I also loved. I will read anything else McQuiston writes after this- such a joy to read. Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to review this AEC!

Super adorably cute and unebelievably big hearted, Red White and Royal Blue turns the trope of enemies into friends into something much deeper... making me feel a renewed sense of hope and optimism that has been dormant since 2016.

This book is a queer romance, centered around Alex, a bisexual, bicultural ‘first son of the US’ and Henry, the gay Prince of Wales. All of the side characters are thoroughly and lovingly developed, including Alex’s sister June and her best friend (and granddaughter of the VP), Nora. I would love to read more from their POV and get so much more of this world that shows us the possibility of a female President and a nation that welcomes rather than rejects.

McQuiston easily demonstrates why romance is a genre to be taken seriously, with excellent banter and wonderfully descriptive writing. She delivers a compelling story that addresses real issues that we all read on the news every day and actively making it into her own form of resistance (with lots of gay sex).

Thanks to NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review - pick this up when it hits shelves in May!

How much do I love this book? Oh, let me count the ways.

Alex is one snarky, snarky boy. I love it. He is full of humour, and yes angst and I do enjoy his character quite a lot. He is not flawless, in fact he is never even thought of as infallible and there were a few moments I was horridly embarrassed for him.

Henry. Oh loveable, secretly nerdy Henry ❤ He is so awkward. It is so amazing, and he’s funny, and a bit tragic.

This book is good. It’s liberal, angry, and seeking justice even as it weaves a romantic tale around our two lovely main characters.

It’s mushy at times, heart-wrenching at others, but through it all I just felt good whilst I was reading it. I was also reluctant to leave it behind, wanting to slow my pace almost as much as I was desperate to get to the end.

I cannot express, in any form of language, how much I fucking loved this book!
I knew from the get go I was going to love this, how could I possibly not, but even then this book managed to surpass my expectations.

Something I original compared to a Tumblr AU like synopsis was just that and yet also so much more! It was a story of love and diversity and how witty banter is always the catalyst for a great and epic romance.

I was taken by surprise by the amount of representation in this book: Trans character, bisexual/gay/pan characters, biracial Mexican characters, a fucking female president! All talked about so casually and openly that it made me so happy to read. That's what I want and need more of in all future books I read.

The story in itself caused me severe anxiety because I was rooting for these two from the get go! Everything was going so well and they were so adorable and yet I was only 30% of the way through the book. My reading this in 2 nights may be down to me needing to know if Alex and Henry lived happily ever after.

The side characters in this book were phenomenally written. Each had their own well rounded personality and back story that fit with the story perfectly and all interacted really well. Besides from the tooth-rotting and heart-warming love story, the interactions between all the characters in general was probably my favourite thing.

The main characters themselves were so loveable and super easy to root for. They, again, had so much personality and heart to them, but also just the right amount of angst to make the story even more interesting and cause me to get an ulcer.

There was so many times I found myself getting sucked into this story and completely forgetting it was a work of fiction, this caused me to be very sad when I was pulled back into reality.

I was so incredibly excited when I was accepted for an ARC and I can now die happily knowing that I got to read and experience this book. Although I'd also really like to keep on breathing and be able to recommend this book to anyone and everyone I ever come across

This book is a delight. So full of hope and love, it was exactly what I was hoping it would be. It depicts a country/world that is inclusive and open-minded and hopeful. I wanted to curl up and live in that world. It's impossible not to fall in love with Alex and Henry.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing this ARC for me in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a fun read! It was exactly the kind of book I've been looking for. Big on humor and dialogue, sweet, and pretty light on the heavy stuff. A fun little escape into a world with a female president and a son who falls in love with the Prince of Wales. It's a rather exciting world to jump into, especially right now.

The enemies to lovers trope was executed so well. I loved how Henry and Alex went from being cold to each other, to gradually talking daily, so slowly that Alex didn't even realize what was happening. Those early conversations were excellent. Especially the night that Alex called Henry while he was eating Jaffa Cakes and watching The Great British Bakeoff. That conversation is what had me, I think. I felt that spark between the two of them and needed them to be together.

The two of them together was just magical. Their deep conversations had me swooning, and I'm not an easy swooner. There was just something about their eloquence and expression to each other that really got me.

At first, I wasn't sure I liked Alex. He was a big mouth and rather obnoxious, but as he figured himself out and realized his love for Henry, things got better. He has pretty good character development.

For me though, it was all about Henry. The sweet, stoic, gay Prince. He held himself well against Alex during those "enemies" days and really brought Alex back down to Earth. I would love to read this book from Henry's POV. To get inside his mind and explore how he was navigating everything with Alex.

Overall, I really loved this book. It was funny, sweet, and beautifully Queer with very few cringe moments (and even those were slight cringes). My only issue was the chapters were rather lengthy. There were many chapters where it cuts to a new scene and got confusing. It felt like there should have been a chapter break.

I LOVED EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS BOOK - from the m/m relationship, to the relative mentioning of politics, I could not put this story down and will be recommending it to everyone I know when it comes out!!

This book. This book! Adorable, heartfelt, hilarious, wrenching, and ultimately so satisfying. Henry and Alex are so great together, and the drama of their unexpected relationship is only heightened by international relations and a fraught presidential election.

I’ll say it: I think this book is going to be a huge hit this year, so read it as soon as you can.

So listen America...we messed up. Politically, we are a straight up mess right now and it's heartbreaking to turn on the T.V everyday. But imagine a world where it wasn't. Imagine a world where instead of messing up the entirety of our country by electing someone who is basically a two-bit dimwitted super-villain, we elected a strong self-made mother from the heart of Texas. This book has the power to transport you, however brief it may be, to an alternate timeline where America did just that. It's this incredible escape that I didn't know I needed. A fun, yet tragic break, because it breaks my heart to remember it's not real. The book will make jokes or poke fun imagining their versions of worst-case scenarios, which just happen to be our reality and I just about fell apart.
Beyond that, lets imagine an powerhouse first family duo that just about had me dying with laughs. Our protagonist, Alex (who is perfect, I die) is Half-Mexican, full on bisexual, and 100% idiot. I related to him a lot because the only difference there is that I'm full Mexican. You couldn't ask for a more sympathetic, hilarious, and completely amazing character to follow. He made me laugh, cry, and I really did feel everything he felt. This book just has a way of drawing you in to all the characters. I loved his love of history all his passion and his incapability of chilling.
His love story is fun, tender, and 100% heartfelt. I'm not kidding, I felt it. In my heat. And yes, it hurt. Henry is the perfect pair to Alex. Their Enemies-to-Friends-to-Lovers is one for the ages! You'll swoon over their emails, laugh at their antics, and angst right along side them. It's truly one of the best written romances I've read in a long while. It's so rare to fins characters with this level of chemistry written into them. Paired along with hilarious side characters you actually are engaged with, a well paced story that takes you everywhere, and just some of the best darn dialogue (plus flawless pop culture references that convince me the author is cool), and you've got a book you'll be gushing about for a good long while. Just like Me!!!!

This was a thoroughly charming queer romance between an imagined British prince and American First Son. Genuinely delightful - about a third of the way in I starte gloating over how much there was left to go, glad that so much stretched ahead of me. We're primarily in Alex's head, as FSOTUS, and the author is clearly much more familiar with American idiom, politics, and conventions - all of which figure heavily. A couple of errors about British royal protocol, power, and language, but there's a pleasant move throughout the novel away from British stereotypes, and Prince Henry, who begins as fairly cardboard, becomes fully human. The romance is wonderful from the word 'go'; from enemies to forced friends to real friends to lovers. It stays tense until the final few chapters, but the progress feels very real and earned, and also modern - McQuiston interpolates texts, emails, and group chats in a way that's not intrusive and that makes sense. I could imagine it making a great movie!

'Red, White & Royal Blue' is a stellar debut novel. I'm not typically into romance novels but I was intrigued by the plot, and decided to give it a go- only to find that I couldn't put it down! McQuiston has created characters that are flawed, funny, and mostly importantly: likable. I found every aspect of the novel to be incredibly charming, and the dialogue was relatable and engaging. Daring, smart, and sexy- I've already recommended this one to my co-workers and can't wait to sell it! I can see it being a hit over Pride month this June, and I do believe I've found a new staff pick.

This was one of the cutest books I have read in forever! I am usually not too big on contemporary personally but I found this one to be refreshingly different. It is definitely more new adult than YA but I think can be enjoyed by both demographics.

I didn't know I needed a romance novel between the Mexican-American First Son of the United States and the Prince of Wales, but I did. I really, really did.

Red, White & Royal Blue is sweet, HOT, funny, and so worth reading.

4.5/5 stars

I don’t want to say this book was perfect because it wasn’t.

I had some issues with the technical aspects of the writing. The amount of run-ons almost gave me a heart attack (especially in some of the dialogue), and some of the sentence structure didn’t make sense realistically. And don’t get me started on the present tense (honestly, I really, really hate present tense). I’m hoping some of these technical issues will be fixed in the finished copy, but even if they aren’t, I would whole-heartedly recommend this book.

Red, White & Royally Blue really hit me in a way that I cannot even begin to articulate for you all.

At the heart of this novel, it is about one person who grows to love another – or maybe they loved the other person the whole time and they just simply hadn’t realized. Deeper though, it’s the tale of two boys who can’t tell their truth because they are forced to live in the public eye. Both are leaders of their countries in some form or another, and they spend most of the novel trying to figure out what that means for them.

Are they truly doomed from the start?

Alex is exceptionally witty and America’s sweetheart. He goes to extraordinary lengths to fake ‘relations’ with his best friend for fun (tabloids are no joke), and his entire life has been focused on trying to get through school in order to become the best politician he can be. And to Alex, Prince Henry of Wales is as bland as unbuttered toast. When the time comes that they have to fake a friendship in order to save their asses from the media, Alex is completely dreading it. After all, who lists their favorite food as mutton pie?

But after time progresses, Alex realizes that not everyone in the public eye is as open as he is. Maybe there is more to Henry than the cold indifference that Alex always detected. Mocking text messages turn into constant communication until one day, they blinked and realized they had gotten themselves into something much deeper than either one of them expected.

“So, imagine we’re all born with a set of feelings. Some are broader or deeper than others, but for everyone, there’s that ground floor, a bottom crust of the pie. That’s the maximum depth of feeling you’ve ever experience. And then, the worst thing happens to you. The very worst thing that could have happened. The thing you had nightmares about as a child, and you thought, it’s all right because that thing will happen to me when I’m older and wiser, and I’ll have felt so many feelings by then that this one worst feeling, the worst possible feeling, won’t seem so terrible. But it happens to you when you’re young. It happens when you brain isn’t even fully done cooking – when you’ve barely experienced anything, really. The worst thing is one of the first big things that ever happens to you in your life. It happens to you, and it goes all the way down to the bottom of what you know how to feel, and it rips it open and carves out this chasm down below to make room. And because you were so young, and because it was one of the first big things that happen in your life, you’ll always carry it inside you. Every time something terrible happens to you from then on, it doesn’t just stop at the bottom – it goes all the way down. […] You need to understand this to be with Henry. He is the most loving, nurturing selfless person you could hope to meet, but there is a sadness and a hurt in him that is tremendous, and you may very well never truly understand it, but you need to love it as much as you love the rest of him, because that’s him. That’s him, part and parcel. And he is prepared to give it all to you, which is far more than I ever, in a thousand years, thought I would see him do.”

“I’ve never … I haven’t been through anything like that. […] But I’ve always felt it, in him. There’s this side of him that’s… unknowable. […] But the thing is, jumping off cliffs is kind my thing. That’s the choice. I love him, with all of that, because of all of that. On purpose. I love him on purpose.”

The novel tells the story of two boys navigating a love much greater than either of them ever expected. Sometimes, if something is worth it enough, you might just have to sacrifice everything for it, but the journey ends up going in a direction neither one of them ever expected.

Aside from Alex and Henry’s story (I have raved to every friend I have about how much I love their relationship), there are a lot of political undertones. At the base of it all, we have general politics and re-election campaigns, but even moreso, there are so many minority stories that just aren’t told enough. I cried like a baby every time the President’s journey was mentioned. Here we have a divorced woman with two mixed, half-Mexican children. Her ex-husband was the product of undocumented immigrants, and still, they both made something of themselves. We see the first openly gay man in Senate and kickass ladies and…

honestly, this book meant a lot to me. Representation in books is something so real that can make people feel so seen. I know we always preach about strong female characters and all of that, but it is so fricken inspiring to see a girl like Nora on these pages. She is a genius and able to crunch numbers so easily, but she is nothing like the typical nerdy girl who is too shy to speak. She is whole and complex and complicated. She is bold and loud and unapologetic about being true to herself, and holy crap, I am so grateful for that. I can only imagine how inspired so many others may be after they read this book and see a version of themselves on the page.

Casey McQuiston is a master at developing genuine human relationships. She’s brilliant in every sense of the word because she presents the good, the bad, and the messy in such realistic and believable ways. Her characters are more than just a perfect presentation on a page.

At the end of the day, sometimes the messiest parts of us are what make us most human. And Casey captured just that.

Please please please read this book. Even if you are stuck at the beginning, please push through. (ESPECIALLY TO THOSE DAMN EMAILS. HOLY CRAP, ROMANCE). You will not regret it.

I was higly waiting for this book. I am pretty sure I have never read a LGBTQ+ rom-com before and it was all I wanted it to be.

It was heartwarming, funny and a bit sexy, and it was also in a weird way believeable. I usually find that rom-coms can be a bit over the top and unrealatble, because they are trying to do to much. In an another world this story could be true.

I mean, the odds of a first son or daughter and a prince or princesse falling in love with someone of the same sex are quite slim, but this book shows that one does not choose who to fall in love with. It also gives hope of a world of greater acceptance of other peoples lives.

Get ready for some fun with this book! Adorable is the word that keeps coming to mind. Get ready to fly through this enjoyable read.