So recently I finally got around to reading Casey McQuiston's Red, White and Royal Blue, which has been on my TBR pile for quite a while, but which I just never got around to reading. I don't know why that is. I've been a big McQuiston fan since reading One Last Stop, which I loved. And I generally read A LOT of M/M romance. I think, honestly, it was the political angle that was turning me off. And the British angle. And then, of course, it became incredibly popular and that was cause enough to ignore it.
The political situation in this country is just. So. Fucked up. The tought of reading a book centered around American politics was intensely cringe. And while I have nothing against the British per se (my DIL is from the UK. I've had friends and family members who've lived/still live there) I DO NOT understand why so many Americans are so deeply, profoundly invested in the British Royal family. I think the level of privilege is obscene and the outmoded protocols are absurd. But that's all beside the point.
I ended up enjoying the book very much and thought it was very well done. One thing I really enjoy about McQuiston's books (the two that I've read) is that she gets her locations RIGHT. I lived in NYC during the late 70s/early 80s--which is exactly when and where part of One Last Stop is set. So I really appreciated that there was nothing to jar me out of the story with a sense of, "Well, that's just not right!" Which happens way too often, unfortunately.
I think I've been to all the locations in RW&RB and lived in at least two of them (three if you count NYC, which is only mentioned in passing) and once again it was seamless and FUN. I got homesick for California just listening to her characters talk about it; and found myself feeling more appreciative of my current home state of Texas due to her depictions of Texas and Texans, which were spot on and FONDLY portrayed.
Right now, everything in this country is so polarized. It was nice to look back (even from this short distance) to a time when things weren't quite to hate-filled.
So I enjoyed the American parts of the book much more than I was anticipating. Even the politics was handled in an enjoyable manner. I also enjoyed the Claremont-Diaz family's interactions. Where the book fell down a little for me was in the British protocols. And for that I blame author KJ Charles.
Charles IS British and she writes about the aristocracy with incontestable AUTHORITY. By which I mean, I have no way of knowing whether she's actually right about everything she writes concerning titles, inheritance law, etc, but she is clearly knowledgeable about the subject and writes with such confidence that I have absolute faith in everything she says about the matter.
And, in short, I've read enough UK-set romances to have serious doubts about a lot of McQuiston's British characters.
Whatever, it's a REALLY small quibble. I do wish she'd been more vague about the time frame in which the book is set, because that did pull me out of the book, trying to reconcile what actually happened IRL with what happened in the book. This was especially obvious because the book was first published in 2019 and all the events in the book take place in 2020. And, well, we know how THAT turned out.
I also wish she'd invented a fictitious kingdom for Henry to be a scion of. That would have solved all my disconnect surrounding inheritance laws, protocols, and Britain's political structure.
***POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT: British princesses really cannot threaten to depose their mothers (especially not by informing parliament that the Queen should be replaced because her memory is failing). The Princess Royal would be her mother's heir--it doesn't skip a generation. She would not have married against her mother's wishes and, were the heir to the throne to die, his spouse would NOT be in line to succeed him. That is not how any of that works.***
But these are all ME problems, not BOOK problems. All I'm saying is that they wouldn't be problems at all if the times and/or places were a little less specific.
It's one of the things that I really, really appreciated about Kelly Jamieson's brilliant and sadly underrated book, Royally Indecent. It's a fun M/M/F menage featuring a European Prince and not one but TWO Americans. I highly recommend it.
And if you want to see actual members of the British Royal family tossed into a completely fantastical story--along with an additional, totally fictitious royal family--I'd recommend Alex Beecroft's Too Many Faery Princes. Which is delightful.
Oh, and KJ Charles' Will Darling Adventures has a lot of information regarding British laws and the aristocracy. It's set in the 1920s, so NOT contemporary, but really quite good.
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