Book Review: Red, White & Royal Blue

Synopsis

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?

Review

"'So,' she says. 'Do you feel forever about him?'

"And there's no room left to agonize over it, nothing left to do but say the thing he's known all along.

"'Yeah,' he says. 'I do.'"

There’s a sigh that you make sometimes, a very particular sound that loosens your shoulders and lifts all your worries. It’s your favorite comfort food, the big stretch after a perfect nap, it’s like coming home.

It was the sigh I made when I put down this book.

I knew what I was getting into when I started this. Despite it being published summer of 2019, it has been a highly anticipated read for me, and I was ready for some bisexual representation with hella gay scenes and a political backdrop (something I only seem to be interested in through a lens of Fiction). What I wasn’t prepared for, was how freaking hilarious this book was! In the first 80 pages I laughed aloud at least five times, disturbing my cat, my dog, and my boyfriend, who literally paused his game to ask if I was okay. I was squealing into the pages so, obviously, the answer was no. I was dying inside.

Enemies to lovers is, by far, my favorite trope. I’ll read it no matter the premise and have a great time, but this book? This book blew me away. Perhaps enemies is a strong word, but the sheer dislike these boys had for each other at the beginning of the book had me shivering with anticipation. When was the dam going to break? Was there going to be a sexuality crisis, or a slow realization and acceptance? WHEN WERE THEY GOING TO KISS?! I needed to know. I turned pages far too deep into the night just to find out. I mean, the exchanges Alex and Henry had, the mental jabs and unspoken scathing remarks before they were forced to act like friends...

An "infuriatingly symmetrical face," a "stupid chiseled jaw" and sweaty-palmed adrenaline definitely means that Alex hates Henry. Obviously.

Methinks the lad doth protest too much.

Alex's sexual identity has such a wonderful representation for the queer community. So many times in media when a character's sexuality is realized or revealed, there is often a crisis of "no, I can't be anything but straight, it just doesn't make sense!" While this isn't to say that some people could and do go through something like that, it can leave the audience viewing coming out as something personally shameful and unbelievable. This just isn't the case. Sexuality, as Alex comes to understand in RW&RB, is fluid, inexplicable, and often something that has been around for quite a while even if you weren't aware of it. The fact that Casey McQuiston wrote this character as someone who, indeed, takes his time figuring out what Henry's surprising and delightful kiss on New Year's Eve actually means for him, but doesn't pair it with panic and denial, is incredibly validating.

"Straight people, [Alex] thinks, probably don't spend this much time convincing themselves they're straight."

It shows that this is one author who does not see a sexual awakening as something shameful or that has to be justified. It is simply experienced. This is expressed in how Alex is able to see events, feelings, and actions from his past influencing these seemingly new desires to kiss Henry again. And when he finally does, whooo buddy, it's a doozy.

Man, oh, man, I have feelings about this book... A lot of them. I’m nearly overwhelmed with how much I love this story. It’s raw and honest, filled with self-examination, risk, and the best of rewards. My heart went out to Alex and Henry throughout the novel. I cried for them in sadness and in joy. They, and the story itself, unfolded like a love-letter. It was poignant and intimate in all relationships: parental, sibling, romantic. McQuiston's writing is so beautiful and pure and quotable. I mean, they post-scripted their emails with romantic quotes from people in history to show their affection for one another. It's nerdy, humorous, true-love in a modern lens.

"You engross my thoughts too entirely to allow me to think of anything else."

"Tho I long for the actual sunlight contact between us I miss you like a home.

"He brings Henry's hand to his mouth and kisses the little knob of his knuckle, the skin over the blue vein there, bloodlines, pulses, the old blood kept in perpetuity within these walls, and he thinks, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen."

Can they not? The number of times I had to put down this book to clutch my chest dramatically was too damn high.

The thing about this story is that it is so relatable, which is strange coming from a perspective of the First Son of the United States and the Prince of Wales, but there it is. I saw myself and my brother sniping at each other in Alex and June, but ultimately being there for one another. I saw a dissonance between my own queer identity and the values of my parents and grandparents in Henry’s own familial struggles of acceptance.

McQuiston so carefully crafted these characters that I wanted to reread the book as soon as I finished it. I wasn’t ready to leave their world yet. Can June and Nora be my friends, please? Can I gush over art with Henry and nerdy subjects with Alex? I’ve got a lot of desires, okay, I want to be part of their lives.

If you want a humor, here you go. If you want politics and international relations as a stressor for the story, here you go. If you want a coming out tale for New Adult fiction, here you go. If you want a soul-shaking romance that is sweet and vulnerable and challenging in all the right places, here you go.

"Alex looks at [Henry], taking in the whole parcel of him, the centuries of royal blood sitting under an antique Kensington chandelier, and he reaches out to touch his face and looks at his fingers and thinks about holding the Bible at his mother's inauguration with the same hand.

"It hits him, fully: the weight of this. How completely neither of them will ever be able to undo it.

"'Okay,' he says. 'I'm into making history.'"

I am going to be thinking about this book for a very, very long time.