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?
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Goodreads
You’re going to have to bear with me because it’s one twenty-two in the morning and I’m listening to “Take Me Out” by Franz Ferdinand and my brain cells have been completely fried by the beauty that is this book.
First off I should probably clarify a Thing: I don’t love a ton of contemporary. I read it, yes, but until now my favorites consisted of Emergency Contact and perhaps To All the Boys I Loved Before. I read even less of books from the Gothic-Romance section of the library. Nothing against the genre or those who read it, but it isn’t super my niche.
Red, White, and Royal Blue combined so many of my loves I couldn’t help but absolutely adore it. We got the squad goals, the brilliant sisters, the politics, the twisty yet impossibly romantic prose. We have genuinely awful situations that have to be figured out, strategy and family dynamics and Texas barbecue and social commentary that, in all honesty, I haven’t ever seen done as well. There are emails and text messages and news articles and tweets and it seemed so close to reality I wish so badly November 2016 had gone as well as it did in this alternate time. If only. Perhaps my family isn’t a politician family as much as it is a lawyer family, but the kinds of discussions- the final pages detailing the election- that reminded me of so many different childhood memories. A+ for socially-conscious, political families.
Anyway, I think that my feelings towards this book are summed up in the general reaction: reading until one in the morning, flailing for a solid half hour, then for whatever reason deciding that I absolutely must write the review ASAP so that it might post tomorrow. I loved this. I need my own copy so that I can read it over and over again.
I do apologize for the somewhat short, likely unintelligible review but my adrenaline has dissipated into the realization that, much as RWRB has floored me, it is almost two in the morning and I’m kind of tired.
Until Monday!
Katie
Bookwise 