Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
(Format used for this read: Audiobook)
After reading a psychological thriller for my book club last month, we all decided we needed something a tad bit different for this month’s meeting discussion.
Balance is important to us 😁
We needed a rom-com in the mix this go round.
We live in the rural Midwest yall, and wintertime is SO DAMN DREARY.
The freezing cold, cloudy, gray days WELL outnumber the bright, not as cold, sunshine filled ones….and we ALL need a bit more light and fun in our lives…so this month’s read we felt lined up perfectly.
A trendy rom-com about an American president’s handsome son becoming romantically involved with a dashing Prince of England…..yes, please!
This book had all the makings to warm up even the coldest mid America winter days.
Here is the official summary:
“What happens when America’s First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?
When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius―his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There’s only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.
Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn’t always diplomatic.”
My thoughts are a bit all over the place with this book, yall.
I loved that the author hit all kinds of issues in this book: the journey of sexual identity discovery, a woman as President of the United States, a bi-racial character who also is bi sexual, interesting political activism discussion AND a gay Prince of England.
I love the way the author wrote hilarious and also sentimental quick witted banter in all the character dialogue in the story. (be warned though…there is LOOOTS of profanity in these pages so if that bothers you, you should DEF stay away)
Also on the topic of dialogue, Prince Henry and Alex’s conversations can get QUITE steamy at times…I felt myself blushing a WHOLE LOT, yall!
And speaking of blushing…the love scenes in the book are QUITE graphically detailed…so if you like a touch of raunch with your rom-com journeys, this will DEFINITELY be your kind of book!
I’m all for romantic and passionate moments…but the ones in this read were a bit much for me. I don’t like ALL the specific minute details mentioned when I read/watch love scenes in movies or books….I just like a broad overview of things. 😁
Let me explain it this way:
I personally prefer the way the BBC does bedroom scenes compared to how HBO does them.
I like just a smidge of smut….not an entire smear!🤣
I like just enough of a taste to give me the gist of what is occuring….but not a detailed inventory of every specific motion or moan happening. I just don’t want or need all that. And this book DEFINITELY has ALLLLLL that.
That is just my personal opinion though…and hey…one person’s “yuck” is another person’s “yum” and I am not here to hate on anyone’s yum.
So if you prefer to have a bit MORE rather than a bit LESS when it comes to sex scenes, then you will be VERY content while reading this!
I love that this book had so many emotional layers: heart warming moments mixed in with heart wrenching ones, moments of joy mixed in with moments of despair, tears of laughter mixed with tears of sadness.
I will say part of me was a touch cynical when I read about how much the characters WANTED each other in the beginning of their romance…I was like “That is a BIT far fetched from reality….nobody acts like that”
But then….
I remembered WAY back to the days when my husband and I were young and in love and in our early 20s….which was almost EIGHTEEN FLIPPIN YEARS AGO, YALL😮….
And I remembered that giddy feeling of NEWNESS we all get…that feeling that you just HAVE to be with the other person or you will JUST DIE (something the author says A LOT in this story LOL)….
And then I was like “Okay. Maybe what she is writing is NOT that far fetched after all….”
We all can get a bit cynical at times in our old age, can’t we? 😂
Besides…it IS a rom com fictional novel so I mean…”realistic” isn’t supposed to be a theme in regards to the romance anyway….or it probably wouldn’t be as interesting OR nearly as fun LOL
And now that I said the positive things, I have arrived at the big issues I have with this book.
Representation.
Who should be telling the stories of marginalized groups.
Definitely reminded me a bit of how I felt after I read “Simon Vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda”…. you can hear all my long winded thoughts on straight cisgender women writing from the perspective of gay male teenagers here….many of the thoughts I had while reading that book are very similar to the ones I had reading this one.
EXCEPT…..
THIS author is NOT a straight cisgender woman like the above author is.
This author does identify as queer and non binary (I double checked the preferred pronoun usage….since the author said she uses all of them, I am using she/her in this review) so she is in fact part of the LGBTQ+ community and can 100 percent write with realness in regards to the various character’s sexual identity journeys. I have read a few interviews where she said she did indeed weave some of her own personal story into pieces of these characters stories.
BUT…
Is it okay that she writes about gay/bisexual MEN’S experiences?
I thought about this a lot as I listened to the very graphically detailed sexual experiences the author wrote about with Henry and Alex……
One of the things I mentioned before (and is kinda related) is that I seriously can NOT STAND when men write from a women’s perspective, ESPECIALLY when it has anything to do with our bodies….and ESPECIALLY sexual experiences.
I don’t give a shit how many women a man has talked to or how many women a man has been with personally…there are some things he will NEVER EVER be able to fully understand about how our bodies work.
I don’t give a flying flip is he is a dang world renowned ob/gyn and knows the ins and outs of all types of vaginas…he will never able to know how it FEELS to give birth or how it FEELS to have menstrual cramps or how it FEELS to have a clitoris.
I have to wonder if the same type thing can be said here.
Since I am a straight cis gender woman I personally can not speak into this….so I hopped on Google (as yall know I do) to read reviews from voices in the LGBTQ+ community about this book to see if any mentioned anything in regards to this.
Obviously, voices in any community or people group are NOT monolithic….so I wanted to hear from as many as I could and didn’t want to make any assumptions on my own.
Mostly what I found was positive praise for the book in regards to this issue….there were alot of bisexual and gay men book reviewers that said how happy they were to finally read a romcom novel like this.
So…IDK.
Maybe I’m just being overly sensitive about this or reading too much into it all.
I’d love to hear more opinions from my friends and followers who are gay and bisexual men on this very thing regarding this book…so if you feel comfortable reaching out to chat, please do…I’d totally value and appreciate your personal perspective ❤
Another problematic thing that arose for me when reading that I *DID* see reviews about was the author writing from a biracial and Mexican perspective.
Casey McQuiston is white and from South Lousiana (not far from my own hometown, actually!)
White people writing from a BIPOC perspective AND making money off of them does NOT sit well with me.
Like….that does NOT need to happen.
One of the reviews I saw was written by a person of Mexican descent…take a second and read their thoughts because it will lay out alllllll the reasons why this mess is a problem. Their words matter WAY MORE than my own on this:
https://cubiclereads.com/blog/the-dnf-diaries-red-white-and-royal-blue
So…..
I have no final opinion on this book really.
It was a mixed bag for me as you can tell by my thoughts.
🤷♀️