#CBR11 Review #38: Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston


I’m not the first Cannonballer to review this one, and I’m sure I won’t be the last. And truly, this book was exactly what I wanted. It’s fun, smart, and sweet. Is it all that realistic? In some ways, absolutely, and in others no. But do you really think I picked something like this up for the realism? No! It’s about how I thought it would make me feel, and I was right! The tone of the book suggests a happy ending, and you’re dang right you get it!

The premise of Red, White & Royal Blue is simple enough: Alex, first-son of the (female!) president of the United States has a beef with Henry, the Prince of England. After an altercation between the two is caught on camera, the two governments decide to create a PR spin about the two spending time together and being close friends. And once they actually do start spending time together, well… their relationship may suddenly become a sticking-point in the image of the royal family, and in Alex’s mom’s bid for re-election. Can they keep their relationship a secret as needed? Do they really want to, in the end?

That’s right, y’all, we’ve got a classic enemies-to-friends-to-lovers tale on our hands baybeeee (one of my favourite tropes, tbh) and a forbidden romance to boot. It’s one of those things where you just want to yell, “Why do you think you’re so obsessed with this person? You realize you don’t actually hate them, right??” The writing itself is very funny, though it does hit on the serious side at times: although these are fictional characters, they do live in our real world and thus have to deal with real-life issues. It really does poke fun at our current times (if maybe a bit on the nose and heavy-handed at times), giving a wink to a world that maybe we don’t entirely live in yet, but will one day be a reality; it’s not perfect but, like I said, happiness is indeed found in the resolution, and isn’t that a sigh of relief?

Additionally, it’s not just Alex and Henry who bring this story to life, being wonderful little counterpoints to one another; there is also a great cast of supporting characters, many of whom are well-developed. They bring new flavours to the story, and add new stakes as you can tell that Henry and Alex really care about the people in their lives. While maybe they act on their impulses and do some selfish things, it is clear that these two and not the center of the universe, however it might feel to them: there are bigger things at play, and in ways that feel very real.

So I don’t have much more to say about this novel than, if you want something kind of cheesy, cheeky, and romantic, then definitely read this book. Does it come across at times like something that you could see someone writing as a fanfic about two world-known personalities? Sure. But like I said, it’s not about real people so it doesn’t feel weird. This is a fantasy, and I’m happy to have lived in it for a little while as I read this book!

[Be sure to visit the Cannonball Read main site!]

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

#CBR5 Review #20: Th1rteen R3asons Why by Jay Asher

Image
Jay Asher’s young adult novel Thirteen Reasons Why focuses on the important topic of teenage suicide, and how a young person may be led to it. While the writing is effective in demonstrating how a person’s actions may affect another in ways that they could never have imagined, reading this novel made me feel a little strange, almost as if it left a slightly sour taste in my mouth upon finishing it. Not in that the topic of suicide makes me uncomfortable like it does some people, but that there may have been ways to make the whole thing have more of an impact? The tone was a little more bitter than I thought it would be? I’m not sure. In any case, here is specifically what the story is about: Thirteen Reasons Why starts with a young boy named Clay receiving a series of cassette tapes anonymously in the mail. As he listens to them, he finds that they are from one of his classmates, Hannah, who recently committed suicide, making a list of thirteen people/incidents that in...
Read more

#CBR5 Review #33: Peter Panzerfaust, vol. 1 – The Great Escape by Kurtis Wiebe and Tyler Jenkins

Image
The simplest way to describe the comic series of Peter Panzerfaust would be as a mid-teens Peter Pan, fighting through World War II Europe with a group of French orphans. It’s the kind of thing that makes some people turn away as it seems ridiculous, while others are intrigued by how it could work, putting this classic figure of Peter Pan into a completely different and historically real universe. And does it work? I think it does, extremely well: Peter Panzerfaust takes the iconic image of the boy who never wants to grow up and turns his mythology on its head to become something else entirely. It’s not about not wanting to grow up, but about keeping a youthful spirit in a situation where you are forced to grow up before you are really even an adult. The first volume of Peter Panzerfaust (there are only two trade volumes as of now), entitled The Great Escape deals with how a group of young French orphans first meet up with the vivacious figure of Peter. The story is told fro...
Read more

#CBR5 Review #28: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Image
I started out reading John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men while picturing it as an old-timey travelling farmer story starring Walton Goggins and Hodor (hooray!). Oh, how amusing this was to me at first. And it really was the easiest way to picture the characters (with some slight changes, of course) in my head as it all went along. Until the course of the story started to fill me with worry and doubt, which ended up in just plain old heartbreak. I should have seen it coming; I did see it coming, but just like how you may watch a film even though you know you’re going to end up crying in it, I walked right into this one as well. That’s not to say that it made me intensely emotional or anything, but it kind of weighed a little heavy on my heart at the end. This could definitely be seen as a testament to the author’s abilities as a writer, and it really was a beautiful and brief story, but at the same time, I’m not sure if it was really for me at the end of all things… It is true,...
Read more