Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Red, White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston

Alex Claremont-Diaz is the 'First Son' (not a thing) and along with his older sister June and best friend, and grandaughter of the Vice President, Nora, form the White House Trio, who have enchanted young America since his mother succeeded Barack Obama to became the first woman president.

 

As you can see, this is a romance fantasy on multiple levels. At the start of the book there is a routine appearance at a royal wedding. An international incident of tiny, tiny proportions occurs when Alex squabbles with the groom's younger brother, Prince Henry of Wales, and they both topple into a very expensive cake.

 

To mend matters and prevent deterioration of political relations between Great Britain and the United States, seriously, Alex and Henry are forced to spend time with one another.

 

Uh, obviously they hit it off really well. The premise is as silly as any other romantic comedy, but I enjoyed this as much as everyone said I would. Alex and Henry have a great rapport and secondary characters really bump it up into a perfect, escapist story. The obstacles to their true love story are the judgement of their politically-minded families and concerns about what their nations might think.

 

The political fantasy gets hotter when we go into the nitty-gritty of Alex's plans to win back his mother's home state of Texas for the Blue. They are Mexican American through their father, who is still active in politics in California. There are acknowledgements of American's who aren't happy seeing a divorced woman with brown children in the White House. This makes the fantasy that much better. The one sour note was a plot line with an older, openly gay, congressman that felt forced. I also wanted to royal family nerd the alternate history required to change-up three generations of the British royal family - Queen Mary II reigns, and Henry's mother is first in line  - but that'll have to be another day.

 

I am conceding that I'm just a book prude or something because this is yet another romance that I just had to flippy-flip the pages past the sex, in part because I wanted to get back to the story. There was nothing wrong or anatomically impossible or inadvisable in what they were doing, of course. The plot was just much more interesting.

 

Henry and Alex are just adorable. This is a book that any one tired of the reality of the political moment should be happy to get into.