as the president's only son, alex claremont-díaz is paparazzi fodder. he's young, attractive, and smart. he's got a will-they/won't-they thing going on with his best friend nora, the vice president's granddaughter and a great relationship with his older sister, june. which is a good thing, since they inhabit this politically-famous world together, one where they must balance being wild and carefree with avoiding scandal at all costs. 

and maybe if alex hadn't been forced to attend the future king of england's wedding as red, white & royal blue opens he might have avoided running into prince henry and taking out the wedding cake in a spectacular fashion. it's not every day an act of clumsiness and rivalry results in an international incident. but it has, and now he is forced to spend even more time with his possibly least favorite person on the planet. 

(my only complaint about this book is that prince henry is named henry. i would have preferred some extra distance from the current royal family. this is a book that presents an alternate reality, and i would have been more easily able to stay in it if his name had been edward or james or some other innocuous british royal family name.)

anyway, the more henry and alex spend time together, the more there is something there. between them. a spark. a connection. something. alex isn't quite sure he knows how to put it into words. and when henry takes action. well, oh my. 

i really and truly enjoyed this debut. the characters are all wonderfully drawn, and the way they work through their problems is done in a way that is sweet and lovely and so swoony. i love enemies-to-lovers stories, and this book is just my jam. if you liked carry on and the royal we you will like this book.

I'm pretty sure I was laughing by page 3 and never stopped.  Oh my, this book was so great!  This is one of the best debit novels I've ever read. I don't know where this author has been hiding but she needs to write ALL the books. Now!  

The writing is witty and exciting, the banter between all of the characters will crack you up or make you melt. I find I don't really have the words to adequately express how much this book entertained me.  Alex is such a nut. Seriously, he's a bit of a neurotic mess. He's also lovable, goofy, sexy and super smart and driven. 

Henry, the Prince of Wales, has a quiet demeanor initially but once he drops his public facade, he is the perfect compliment to Alex. Henry is thoughtful, poetic, kind, and has a razor sharp sense of humor.  Every scene these two have is just magic. The book is only told from Alex's POV (third person) but since Henry wears his heart on his sleeve, it's no loss to the story.

I had a review copy so I'm not sure if this will be a problem with the finished product but the transitions were hard to follow.  Some sort of page break or '****' to indicate you were changing scenes would have been nice. I had to stop and start a few sentences over several times due to this.  But it might just be a formatting thing for the review copy.  

The book is pretty sexy which I thought was great. I hadn't really expected that since the cover is sort of cutesy but don't expect anything super detailed. I really hope a lot of people give this book a try.  

The story does run a bit to the 'alternate universe' from an American political standpoint. But don't let that turn you off. Just remember that it's fiction and the characters view don't have to reflect your own (although they do mine so hah!). The author wrote this book beginning in 2016 so the political climate was not quite the same as it is now.  

This will likely be in my top reads for 2019 list!

I'd like to start out by saying that I LGBTQIA books have never appealed to me, now before you get angry, read on. It is not because I am against them or have a problem with people who are of that community, it's more so that I have hard time reading these because the ones I have tried to read were very explicit and not something I could finish because of that. 

But this book took me surprise. I wanted to see if I could branch out of my little reading shell and see if this would be the book that proved me wrong. And it did. It is wonderful book about love. You see, love has no color, nor gender or faith. Love is just that, love. We all want that, we all have it coded in our DNA. Sometimes it drops on us by mistake, this is when the magic happens. Whether your world is like Alex's or Henry's or like me, your average everyday Jane. 

But if you're like Henry and Alex, when you have duties and promises to keep. You'll do anything to make sure that happens. Right? Even being nice to your enemy. This book also pushes boundaries because guess what? The president is FEMALE. That's right! Forget gender inequality in this book. I loved that Casey said screw you world. The chick is gonna rule like a top hat. But not only is she female but Mexican-American. Yep. 

So Alex's mom is getting ready for her 2020 campaign tour, and he is very involved politically. They set out to England, and he sees his enemy, dear Henry, who is the son of the Queen of England. This is where a problem occurs, and the two have to pretend to be friends. But it's not real, not any of it, well not for long. Soon the public appearances and texting have the two growing closer. Obsessed even. Henry makes the first move, being that he's always been gay but wasn't able to live proudly by that. But Alex makes him feel free, to be his true self. I love that we get to see Alex transform, from someone who's lost to coming to terms about who is really is, and how to get there without stepping on anyone's toes while being honest to his heart. 

This might be the best book I have read so far in 2019 and that is saying a lot because I have read some book by my favorite authors, who NEVER disappoint me. 

All I am saying is pick Red, White and Royal Blue and dive straight into a colorful world where humanity and love can co-exist without drowning against the evils.

P.S. This book is quite funny. And the secondary characters are fabulous!

Reviewing a book with this much hype and buzz pre-release almost makes me want to... not. There are already legions of fans to gush about how amazing Red, White, & Royal Blue is, and dissenting from that opinion always seems a little uncomfortable, but I must. While McQuiston’s début has a lot of charm going for it, and was a pleasure to read at times, I can’t say it’s a perfect book.

The story takes place in what is essentially an alternate universe where the 2016 election was won by a Texas democrat named Ellen Claremont, and across the pond an entirely different royal family is ruling England (but Brexit is still a thing). In this more dayglow world, Claremont’s son Alex Claremont-Diaz is an up-and-comer in D.C. who has made a name for himself as part of his mom’s political team. Unfortunately, he has a bad run in with His Royal Highness, Prince Henry of Wales (yes, not Harry) at a royal wedding and now needs to do damage control for the sake of US/UK international relations.

The idea is that they’ll pretend to be friends, show up to some events together, get photographed, and it will smooth over any ruffles. Red, White, & Royal Blue advertises itself as an enemies-to-lovers romance, but really the flares of annoyance between Alex and Henry burn out fast, and soon they’re texting late at night  and getting to know each other as people, not just political figureheads.

To be honest, the book almost lost me in the setup. I was incredibly excited for it  based on the premise, but it’s a slow starter. If you look at the page count, maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise because it’s pretty long for a romantic comedy. Alex and Henry spend ages on opposite sides of the Atlantic, with only tiny interactions, and I was impatient for the romance to start. 

At the same time, I had to adjust some to the voice. I don’t think I’d be wrong to say this book is very ‘millennial’. I’m a fellow millennial, but dear God. The humor, cultural references, and general style of dialogue between Alex, his sister June, and friend Nora is like someone was screaming ‘We’re youths!!!’ and the humor was at times funny and at others just plain forced. It gave the story a weird feel of both existing exactly in our current time, and also being eerily so not our current political climate (politics plays a large part in the story) that I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I do wonder if the whole book will feel terribly dated in a very short time.

Now, once the romance sparked, it was lovely. Alex and Henry are both adorable, well-rounded characters that I loved. Really, the whole cast of the book is fantastic. Alex comes off as someone young and probably reckless who isn’t sure where he wants to be, but he’s very rooted to the people in his life. Henry is almost the opposite in that he’s cautious and thinks his fate is predetermined by birth, but longs for relationships with anyone who can deeply understand him. The boys falling for each other is stellar, and I’d recommend the book to anyone just for their relationship. It felt realistically like young love - all uncertainty and newness and excitement. If you extracted the romance alone from the story, it would’ve been an A+, hands down.

My only caveat to that is a personal one, in that so much of their relationship takes place via text message and email and I have a pet peeve about that. I just don’t enjoy reading long exchanges in an epistolary format, and there’s a lot of that here (including a podcast). Also, their emails were... a lot to take. If there are twenty-something guys that write evocative, maudlin emails with quotes from historical figures, I’ve never met one.

Besides that, one of the biggest issues I had was that the pacing - and the timeline of the book - is very odd. There are no real transitions from scene to scene, so you’d be in D.C. with Alex thinking about something, then suddenly he’s sitting beside Henry. How did we get here? When is this? I wondered if this was partially due to the formatting of the ARC I had, but I think a lot was the writing style and how McQuiston kind of meanders from thought to thought at times. It was a challenge to understand the timeline and when characters changed location, which pulled me out of the story.

Obviously, scores of readers have already enjoyed Red, White, & Royal Blue, and plenty more will as well. I found myself both completely engrossed and wanting to savor parts, as well as skimming others. I don’t think my reservations are enough that I would tell anyone not to read it, because most people will fall into the camp of enjoying it despite its flaws. And really, I think Alex and Henry are pretty swoon-worthy, and I look forward to the movie version of them when it inevitably gets made. If I sound overly critical, it’s because I think this book could have been perfect if not for the drawbacks – the forced humor, the indiscernible timeline and location shifts and the epistolary nature of much of the romance. There’s so much to love about the concept of a queer, international royal romance that has humor and a New Adult voice, that I wish so much I hadn’t found a single issue. Sadly, I think Red, White & Royal Blue just had too much going on, and that kept it from reaching DIK status.

Buy it at: Amazon/Apple Books/Barnes & Noble/Kobo

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In this world, the United States elected the first female president of the United States following Obama’s presidency. This book follows the President’s son Alex, the First Son of the United States, FSOTUS for short. Alex loves politics and people, and desperately despises Henry, the Prince of Wales. However, when a mishap at a royal event launches a series of tabloid pieces about the long feud between the first son and Prince of Wales, damage control is immediately necessary. The two archenemies must now pretend to be good friends to refute the scandalous rumors about their grudge. As time goes on, the two realize that they have much more in common than they thought.
This sweet, engaging love story deals with politics, sexuality, royalty, and true love. There are plenty of humorous as well as awkward moments that help develop the love story between Alex and Henry. 
The book mentions plenty of real life political figures such as The Obamas, George W. Bush, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan. The author may be setting this world up for future novels, and considering the supporting characters we see in the book, sequels showcasing their own love stories would be most welcomed. This is a sweet, fun new adult love story that shouldn’t be missed especially if you have an interest in politics.

I was a bit apprehensive going into this because of the buzz this queer romance novel has already gotten, but having read it I completely get the hype.

This was a hoot and a half – I had so much fun with this book. I really enjoyed the characters, especially our main character Alex, but as a whole the cast of characters made me smile.

The novel is set in an alternative reality with a female US president and a British royal family that is slightly different, but the history other than that remains unaltered (up to the Obamas in the case of the US). I thought that was quite a fun thing. And McQuiston’s reality is certainly a bit brighter than the actual current political climate. 

I have never actively sought our LGBTQ+ romances, but this one caught my eye and I am glad it did. It was very cute and kind of sexy without being too crude. This is definitely my kind of romance novel.

The only gripe I had was that it was written in third person present tense, which is my least favourite writing style, but it could not ruin the book for me.

I wasn't expecting much when I took this e-ARC with me on vacation. I wanted to read it before I ordered it for our library so I could determine whether to place it in our adult or teen collection. (Adult collection) I really enjoyed this book. It was a sweet, sexy, romantic story. Alex and Henry's characters were well written and I cheered for their love story to succeed.

Oh my word. As a straight, white 41 year old woman...I LOVED THIS BOOK WITH ALL OF MY HEART. It was my very first male/male romance and I fell in love with Henry and Alex. Their chemistry is insane but oh...the romance. The LETTERS they write one another are just beautiful and made my heart go pitter patter. And the steam? INSANE. 

I adored the story and also the  nod to Texas, because I'm a Texas girl in my soul.

Yes, this is a contemporary romance...but don't get it twisted. Casey McQuiston can WRITE.  The banter, the sexual tension, the love...just perfect.

"When Alex was a kid, before anyone knew his name, he dreamed of love like it was a fairy tale, as if it would come sweeping into his life on the back of a dragon one day. When he got older, he learned about love as a strange thing that could fall apart no matter how badly you wanted int, a choice you make anyway. He never imagined it'd turn out he was right both times."

SWOON, SWOON, and SWOON.

SEQUEL PLEASE.

5 stars.

This book was just about perfect. I adored it!  It was filled with quirky, loveable, fully developed characters, swoon worthy romance, and a timely look at politics, ethics and morality.  It made me giggle, and tear up, and set my heart aflutter. And you know what, it filled me with hope. Hope in people, in politics, and in America; something  I have been sorely missing the past couple of years. Wonderful!

I absolutely loved this book. When I read deeply intricate things like science fiction and high fantasy, I sometimes need something that’s light and fun to reset my brain, and this was definitely it. Alex and Henry are everything to me. I can’t wait for this to release so I can see some fan art and other content. 

If you’re a fan of Yuri on Ice, or read more light-hearted Drarry fan fiction, I really think you’ll enjoy this book. If you have a small interest in politics, bonus for you. This nudged at my deep love for The West Wing without being a political drama. The story really is about Alex and Henry and their relationship. 

I genuinely laughed out loud more than once while reading this, and I caught myself smiling at my phone several times. This will probably go on my top books of the year list.

Red, White, & Royal Blue
Casey McQuiston
B+

Reviewing a book with this much hype and buzz pre-release almost makes me want to...not. There are already legions of fans for Red, White, & Royal Blue to gush about how amazing it is, and dissenting from that opinion always seems a little uncomfortable, but I must. While McQuiston’s debut has a lot of charm going for it, and was a pleasure to read at times, I don’t find it to be a perfect book.

Let me set up for you that, first of all, this story takes place in essentially an alternate universe where the 2016 election was won by a Texas democrat named Ellen Claremont, and across the pond an entirely different royal family is ruling England (but Brexit is still a thing). Is this more dayglow world, Claremont’s son Alex Claremont-Diaz is an up-and-comer in D.C. who has made a name for himself as part of his mom’s political team. Unfortunately, he has a bad run in with His Royal Highness, Prince Henry of Wales (yes, not Harry) at a royal wedding and now needs to do damage control for the image of US/UK international relations. 

The idea is that they’ll pretend to be friends, show up to some events together, get photographed, and it will smooth over any ruffles. Red, White, & Royal Blue advertises itself as an enemies-to-lovers romance, but really the flares of annoyance between Alex and Henry burn out fast, and soon they’re texting late at night, and getting to know each other as people, not just political figureheads. 

To be honest, the book almost lost me in the setup. I was incredibly excited for this book based on the premise, but it’s a slow starter. If you look at the page count, maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise because, overall, it’s very long for a romantic comedy. Alex and Henry spend ages on opposite sides of the pond, with only tiny interactions, and I was impatient for the romance to start. At the same time, I had to adjust some to the voice. I don’t think I’d be wrong to say this book is very “millennial”. I’m a fellow millennial, but dear God. The humor, cultural references, and general style of dialogue between Alex, his sister June, and friend Nora is like someone was screaming “We’re youths!!!” The humor could be funny, or plain forced. It gave the story weird feel of both existing exactly in our current time, and also being eerily so not our current political climate (because politics are a huge portion of the book) that I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I do wonder if the whole book will feel terribly dated in a very short time. 

Now, once the romance sparked, it was lovely. Alex and Henry are both adorable, well-rounded characters that I loved. Really, the whole cast of the book is fantastic. Alex comes off as someone young and probably reckless who isn’t sure where he wants to be, but he’s very rooted to the people in his life. Henry is almost the opposite in that he’s cautious and thinks his fate is predetermined by birth, but longs for relationships with anyone who can deeply understand him. The boys falling for each other is steller, and I’d recommend the book to anyone just for their relationship. It felt realistically like young love- all uncertainty and newness and excitement. If you extracted the romance alone from the story, it would’ve been an A+, hands down. 

My only caveat to that is a personal one for me, in that so much of their relationship takes place via text message and email and I have a pet peeve about that. I just don’t enjoy reading long exchanges in an epistolary format, and there’s tons of that here (including a podcast). Also, their emails were...a lot. If there are twenty-something guys that write evocative, maudlin emails with quotes from historical figures, I’ve never met one. 

Besides that, one of the biggest issues I had was that the pacing, and the timeline of the book, was very odd. There were no real transitions from scene to scene. You’d be in D.C. with Alex thinking about something, then suddenly he’s sitting beside Henry. How did we get here? When is this? I’m hoping this was partially due to the formatting of the ARC I had, but I think a lot was the writing style and how McQuiston kind of meanders from thought to thought at times. It was a challenge to understand how long the book took place over and when characters changed location, which pulled me out of the story. 

Obviously, scores of readers already enjoyed Red, White, & Royal Blue, and plenty more will as well. I found myself both completely engrossed and wanting to savor parts, as well as skimming others. I don’t think my reservations are enough that I would tell anyone not to read it, because most people will fall into the camp of enjoying this despite any flaws. And really, I think Alex and Henry are pretty swoony-worthy, and I look forward to the movie version of them when it inevitably gets made. If I sound overly critical, it’s because I think this book could have been perfect if not for these drawbacks. There’s so much to love about a queer, international royal romance that also has humor and a New Adult voice, that I wish so much I hadn’t found a single issue. Sadly, I think it just had too much going on in some ways, and that hurt in for me and kept it from the DIK potential it had.

I don’t think I have ever read a romance novel with a gay couple as the main characters. I gotta admit, I’m loving it!!! The characters and the premise is a little trope-y but it’s just such a fun read.

The last chapters of the book had me crying. Flashing back to the 2016 election, remembering buzzing the whole day thinking that we were maybe moments away from having the first woman president. This is a feel good book and I would highly recommend it to the hopeless romantics out there.

Way too cutesy and teenagery for me, despite the main characters being in their 20s. I wanted to love it, especially with the politics angle, but I just couldn't get into it, or bear to read all 432 pages (why so long?!)

I’m not a big romance fan but I loved this and it made me want to try out more from the genre. Everything from the characters to the romance to the politics was great. I just didn’t fall in love with it.

I absolutely loved this book. Five stars, all the stars. I was so into this book that I forgot to mark any of my favorite lines or passages. I started looking for quotes to use and accidentally started rereading it, that’s how much I loved it.

To be honest, I don’t really have words to describe how much I loved this book, so I’m just gonna talk about some of my favorite parts. Like the banter. Interactions between Alex and Henry had me laughing almost immediately. And let’s be real, banter is the best part of any enemies to lovers story. I really liked that Alex and Henry became friends before becoming more. I love friends to lovers almost as much as enemies to lovers, so having it all in one book was wonderful. The first and second kisses between them were amazing and quite literally what romance books are made of.

Now, for Alex. If you know me at all you know that Monty from The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue is one of my favorite characters ever. Alex is pretty much on the same level. What can I say, I love my bisexual disasters 😂
Something that I really connected with in this book was the chapter solely dedicated to Alex figuring out his sexuality. It’s an extremely important part of the book, one that I really appreciated. One that I think a lot of others will connect with. Because sometimes you haven’t “always known” and sometimes you figure yourself out later in life than people feel you should. But it doesn’t always work out that way and seeing that in a book was wonderful.

I’m recommending this book to everyone. I adored it and I want everyone to gush about it with me.

This was a delightfully delightful experience of delight. Oh, and did I mention it was delightful? Casey McQuiston knows how to deliver absolutely all of the feels, while still absolutely refusing to pull any punches when it comes to politics. Though set in an extremely veiled version of the current political landscape in the U.S. in which a woman actually won the 2016 election, McQuiston's commentary on her characters' lives in Washington takes aim at the current administration and hits the mark every time in a brilliantly beautiful way. I cried-- with love for these characters who felt so real it was like they were standing in front of me, with regret that McQuiston's version of the U.S. isn't the real one, and with hope for the future. This is one of the most passionate love stories I've ever read, while still delivering all of the sass, wit, and snark of the best rom-com, Red, White & Royal Blue delivers laughs, tears, sorrow, and joy in equal measure. It was quite simply, the best.

Honestly, I'm not sure what I"m supposed to say in this note to the publisher? I thought that this was a really fun romance novel. The premise jumped out to me from the start (president's son falls in love with the prince of England), and it delivered on the plot. There was enough backstory and heft to the main story that made me care about the supporting characters, and I really enjoyed the political undertones/the election theme.

This book is my favorite book of 2019. I read it in one day and could not put it down. The book lives up to the hype and I highly recommend it. There were parts of the book I was dying laughing at. The romance and characters were well written.

I think , the Urban Dictionary ,  should from now on,  describe  the feeling of Delight . Happiness .  Joie de vivre . Cheerfulness as RED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE ; because that what I felt reading this amazing and utterly entertaining book. 



I just reviewed Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. #NetGalley 
[NetGalley URL]

5 star read for sure.
I was so looking forward to this! It was one of my most anticipated reads of the year and it did not disappoint. This was fantastic and everything I wanted. It has a hate to love romance between the prince of England and the son of the President of the United States. All the characters are wonderfully well developed. It is a messy relationship with many ups and downs and should be considering the political circumstances. I also cried at the afterward the author left. I feel your pain Casey McQuiston, I feel your pain.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy for an honest review.