Red, White, and Royal Blue: Hard to Say, Easy to Read

Title: Red, White, and Royal Blue

Author: Casey McQuiston

Publisher: St Martin’s Griffin

Release Date: 14 May 2019

My very first book review! Disclaimer: I am not a professional and I’m not getting paid for this review. This is a review motivated by wanting to explore potential New Adult themes, a love of reading, and wanting to start a fruitful discourse on these books and media. I will also try to avoid spoilers as best I can, but be warned there may be some lurking about.

Context:

As an avid fan of bookstores, I first learned about Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (henceforth known as RW&RB) when I was meandering around a Barnes & Noble. The bright, eye-catching cover caught my attention, as did the fact it was being highlighted on one of the B&N tables you see when you first walk into the store. I read the back of the book, vaguely interested. I put it back down.

I confess: I am not the biggest fan of romances.

At its core, this is what RW&RB is—a passionate, exciting, life-altering romance between the book’s main character, FSOTUS Alex Claremont-Diaz, and Prince Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor (or Henry Wales, as he tells Alex he used in school).

Alex is the son of the first female president Ellen Claremont, who wins the election in 2016, a stand-in for Hilary Clinton. The royal family of England is similarly fictionalized: Queen Mary instead of Elizabeth, with her daughter Catherine (her husband, a film star died early like Princess Diana, though through sickness), and three children, Philip, Bea, and Henry.

The backdrop of Alex and Henry’s LGBT romance is the 2020 presidential election, paparazzi culture, and the rigid expectations and hierarchy of the English monarchy.

Told through Alex’s point-of-view, RW&RB starts with acrimony between Alex and Henry, until they’re forced for PR-related reasons to spend time together, they quickly become friends and then something more.

Thoughts:

For the most part, I enjoyed RW&RB. It was easy to read, engaging and accessible prose, full of witty banter, good humor, and endearing dumbass boys who you just want to be happy together.

Somewhere in the middle, where all the focus was on growing Alex and Henry’s relationship, I thought the pacing lagged a bit. But then, it picked up nicely, integrating Alex’s job, the family pressures Henry’s under, and the heating up 2020 election into conflict and an inevitable time-bomb of tension. Though, this might just be a matter of taste and preference.

As I mention earlier, straight-up romances are not my cup of tea. However, it wasn’t the romance that grated at me the most in this novel. Again, McQuiston does a good job of integrating the main romance with other internal and external narrative arcs and conflicts. My reservation with this novel is its political landscape and background. It posits a world where a competent woman was elected president over hatred, bigotry, and prejudice in America 2016. Then it posits a world where she wins re-election after her son is outed as bisexual and there are questions of that private email server… The winning electoral votes coming from the “Lometa Longshot,” her home state of Texas.

This is not what happened. This is not something I could ever feasibly believe happening, at least not in the current political climate and landscape. This novel lives and breathes in a fantasy world more than many fantasies. In the acknowledgements, the author even talks about this escapist dream.

For me, as this is a contemporary realistic novel, these alternate-reality elements took away from my enjoyment of this book and made it harder to suspend my disbelief. (Do I believe in complex magic systems, radiation and lightning strikes creating superheroes, and every iteration of alien? Yes. Ellen Claremont and this world? No.) As the narrative is fundamentally connected to these alt-world elements, it’s not something a reader can ignore and receives a lot of attention in the book. Not even the beautiful and poignant romance and coming-of-age story between Alex and Henry could take away from this constant reminder that: No. This is not what happened. No. This is never going to happen.

However, that’s just me. If you can ignore it, if you enjoy these types of things then I highly recommend RW&RB. For some, this alt-reality can be highly enjoyable and a safe space.

As my sidekick Sav so eloquently puts it: “Some people write about what is, other people write about what we wish could be. Both can be equally powerful, if only to spread ideas of hope. When a story gains popularity like Red, White, & Royal Blue, in my mind that counts for something.” RW&RB made The New York Times Bestseller List in 2019, the year it was released. Clearly it struck a chord with audiences, whether for its rich LGBT romance or its escapism or both. Perhaps Ellen Claremont et al. isn’t possible today, but maybe RW&RB’s popularity shows that it’s a reality a large amount of people hope for one day.

Grade: 8 out 10

Accessible prose, good characters, good story. Would read again, eventually. Politics.

New Adult Breakdown:

Alex is twenty-one at the start of the novel. He’s about to graduate from Georgetown. He has his older sister June (who’s only twenty-two) and their best friend Nora (also twenty-two) the VP’s granddaughter, as people he relies on and interacts with—but one of the main issues brought up in RW&RB is Alex’s lack of friends. Though Henry eventually becomes his love interest, it is through discovering Henry that he makes new friends as a burgeoning adult.

Similarly, Alex has to reckon with discovering new facets to his sexuality (he’s bisexual), grapple with his parents’ divorce as he was able to push its repercussions away when it was actually happening as a teenager, and figure out what he truly wants to do with his life—even if that means not following his childhood plans/dreams.

Also, there is sex. A lot of sex. And drinking. Over twenty-one Alex and his friends party, drink, and take advantages of the privileges of being an adult without any sort of negative stigma surrounding their actions. The sex between Alex and Henry is consensual, passionate, and intimately entwined with their growing relationship and feelings.

New Adult or Adult?

While he starts uncertain fully of who he is and what he wants (in fact, the breaking of the original notions of who Alex thinks he is, is part of the point), Alex ends this novel firmly an adult, with a “forever” adult romantic relationship, on the right path and mindset for his career.

Furthermore, the growing pains that Alex goes through in this novel are like a second coming-of-age—aspects of himself he was not able to reconcile and process as a teen/adolescent, but can do so now as a new adult.

For me, I put RW&RB firmly in the New Adult category.