Review: Red, White and Royal Blue

Title: Red, White and Royal Blue

Author: Casey McQuiston

Genre: Romance

Trigger Warnings: Homophobia, homosexual sex (explicit), invasion of privacy, attempted rape (mention)

Back Cover:

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.

Review:

Things I generally don’t like in books:

1. The romance genre
2. Politics

Things that are in this book:

1. It’s a romance
2. Politics

Things that I really, really enjoyed:

1. This book

This was another recommendation from my mother-in-law, and I’ll admit I was skeptical. I’m not a romance fan, I’m not into rom-coms at all, and it’s the rare book where I’m not bored by any politics involved. So I was gobsmacked by how much I loved this book.

It’s just absolutely adorable. In this fictional world, the next president after Barack Obama is Ellen Claremont, a Texas Democrat, and Prince Henry is the grandson of the current British queen, Queen Mary. I think I tolerated the politics in this book because it’s either a distraction so Alex doesn’t have to think about feelings or an impediment to him and Henry being together as opposed to actually being a big part of the plot.

The main plot is an enemies-to-lovers romance, except it isn’t really enemies-to-lovers because the only thing Alex really hated about Henry was that he wasn’t kissing him right that instant, even though he didn’t know it yet. I can see how someone might find Alex’s complete inability to figure out that he’s into Henry unrealistic, but as a Known Bisexual who took nearly a decade to realize thinking about scissoring with same-sex friends were not in fact Straight Thoughts, I found it incredibly realistic and absolutely hilarious. My Kindle copy of this book has no less than 10 notes to the effect of, “Alex, you are so obviously not straight.”

This is just a feel-good read all the way around. The stakes are higher than what I assume an average rom-com would have just because Alex and Henry both have such high profiles, but it has a happy ending and it’s cute and fluffy and full of mutual pining and nothing too dark. The main antagonist is politics for the most part – the pressure to keep up appearances so Alex doesn’t screw up his mom’s reelection campaign and Henry doesn’t “hurt the British royal image.” But they’re so in love (and so horny, there are a bunch of sex scenes and I actually enjoyed them) that they’re determined to make it work even if they have to give up everything in the process.

I did not expect to like this much at all, let alone like it as much as I did. It’s adorable and sweet and cute and overall a really good story. (Plus the author is nonbinary, and I love seeing other nonbinary people succeed!) I absolutely see why my mother-in-law liked it so much, and I absolutely agree.

Review: Otherbound (DNF)

Title: Otherbound

Author: Corinne Duyvis

Genre: Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Verbal abuse, physical abuse, blood/injury, character death

Read To: Page 268

Back Cover:

Amara is never alone. Not when she’s protecting the cursed princess she unwillingly serves. Not when they’re fleeing across dunes and islands and seas to stay alive. Not when she’s punished, ordered around, or neglected.

She can’t be alone, because a boy from another world experiences all that alongside her, looking through her eyes.

Nolan longs for a life uninterrupted. Every time he blinks, he’s yanked from his Arizona town into Amara’s mind, a world away, which makes even simple things like hobbies and homework impossible. He’s spent years as a powerless observer of Amara’s life. Amara has no idea . . . until he learns to control her, and they communicate for the first time. Amara is terrified. Then, she’s furious.

All Amara and Nolan want is to be free of each other. But Nolan’s breakthrough has dangerous consequences. Now, they’ll have to work together to survive–and discover the truth about their connection.

Review:

I wanted to love this book. I really did. The concept was awesome (person in our world is connected to someone in a fantasy world to the point where he literally sees through her eyes), lots of other people have good things to say about it, and the female lead is bisexual. I got about two thirds of the way through it because I wanted to love it. But I finally realized that I just didn’t care enough to finish it.

My main problem was Nolan. I didn’t like his parts of the story at all. He wasn’t a very active character – everything that happened to him seemed to happen by accident, and when he eventually discovers he can affect something in Amara’s world, he uses that power to have conversations with Amara – and compared to what was happening with Amara, his world was really boring. It was kind of hard to care about Nolan’s relationship with his sister when Amara is running for her life.

I was much more invested in Amara’s story. Amara was a solid character, with a lot of conflicting thoughts and feelings that gave her a lot of depth. She also had a crush on Cilla (the princess), which was a fun subplot and added some more complicated feelings to the mix. Her world was interesting – a pretty basic high fantasy world, but with interesting takes on mages and magic, and her situation was interesting. Difficult and seemingly hopeless, yes, but at least interesting.

Around where I stopped reading, though, even Amara’s world lost the plot a little bit. In the beginning, Amara and Cilla are running from their lives from mages who want to kill Cilla, but the man “protecting” them is also horribly abusive. It’s a life-or-death (or physical pain) high-stakes situation. But it kind of loses that – not that there isn’t danger, but it’s dialed down in exchange for some conspiracies. Which, to be fair, were interesting in their own right, but still felt like a step back from the danger of the previous parts.

If the story had been only about Amara, I might have finished it. Even though it lost the plot a bit, I might have pushed through to see how the conspiracies worked out. But I didn’t have the patience to read through Nolan’s parts, and I didn’t care enough about Amara’s story to push through his for hers.

I wanted to love this book, I really did. It just couldn’t make me care enough.

Review: The Blue

Title: The Blue

Author: Stephanie Void

Genre: Science Fiction

Back Cover:

Alan Michael Wolf is an ordinary 19-year-old boy from a backwater colony world whose only dream was to go to military school. However, when he is sent home to recover from an injury, he finds himself stranded when he receives unthinkable news: his home planet is gone. He is left with nothing until a chance encounter with an old man at a spaceport leaves him with three things: a mysterious starship, a giant cat, and the news that his younger sister Katelyn may still be alive. Alan takes off across the galaxy in search of her, but discovers the old man’s ship may have led him to a big secret, one that will lead him to an even bigger truth about why his home planet was destroyed. But there are forces out there who will hunt him down to make sure he is silenced before he can reveal the truth…

Review:

I’ve read a lot of sci-fi subgenres lately (mostly dystopian), but I haven’t read straight sci-fi in ages. So when I found what seemed to be a good YA sci-fi, I decided to try it.

Alan Michael Wolf was a more serious character. I think it was his military training. But he wasn’t stodgy, and he wasn’t a straight-laced stickler for rules, either. Even though he wasn’t as quirky as I prefer my characters to be, I still enjoyed him.

Useia, a Yl’hlie girl who ends up traveling with Alan, was more interesting, at least in terms of background. She was a reluctant assassin, and was certainly full of surprises. Strangely enough, though, I didn’t like her more than Alan. I ended up enjoying them both equally.

I loved the plot. It started with Alan trying to find his missing sister, but a take-down-the-Yl’hlie plot sprung up that became entangled with the find-Alan’s-sister plot. That was another thing I loved about the plot – all the subplots were so entangled with the main plot that it practically seemed like one plot.

I also loved the idea of the Yl’hlie, a group of intergalactic assassins (although how you pronounce a word with four consonants in a row, I have no clue). I enjoyed how bits and pieces of them are slowly revealed, so you gradually learn how they work and that they aren’t limited to assassination on a small scale.

One part I was not the biggest fan of was the romance angle. My problem with it wasn’t the romance itself – I don’t mind a well-played romance. But it seemed like Alan fell in love about five minutes after he saw Useia.

Since Alan spent most of his time on backwater colonies, there wasn’t a lot about the mainstream culture of The Blue‘s sci-fi world. However, there was a lot of travel and transportation involved, which resulted in some interesting details about space travel. It was worked well into the story, though, not dumped in all at once.

Overall, The Blue was an extremely enjoyable sci-fi ride. I don’t think there’s a sequel, or room for one. But I wouldn’t object to reading another sci-fi story by Stephanie Void.

I received a free review copy of The Blue from the author. Her generosity in no way influenced, or sought to influence, this review.