Another Queer Romance Review: Red, White and Royal Blue

If you ask me my favourite book genre I will always tell you it’s fantasy. And if you asked what I thought about YA romance, I would tell you it’s cringe. I love YA romance. It’s such a guilty pleasure of mine I will sit and read a romance book in a quarter of the time I read a fantasy book. Red, White and Royal Blue is no different.

Red, White and Royal Blue has been on my ‘to read’ list for a very long time, I found it on TikTok as I did with most of my TBR, but it was never one I actually thought about reading anytime soon. It was an impulse read, the kindle store had it for 99p and I didn’t think twice.

The book is a gooey, cringe romance about the First Son of the United States Alex and Prince Henry of Wales. A very cliche enemies to lovers story that had me HOOKED from page one. In theory, Alex acted like more of a Brit than Henry did for most of the book because I do believe swearing incessantly is a prime trait of the UK. And you could tell that the author was American, because every Britishism used was very quintisentially posh. Even for a family of royals, who are renowned for being posh, it was a bit far out of reach.

Despite all this, both Alex and Henry were such beautifully fleshed out characters, as were every other character in the book. There were a lot of important characters that had their own lives and emotions, and even through the swearing, you truly got a decent taste of every single one of them. I gravitated towards the leads, something I don’t do much honestly, as I think authors often focus too much on the leads and accidentally made the side characters more interesting. Harry Potter is a prime example of this: Harry is the most boring character of the series. McQuinston however makes both Alex and Henry unmistakably loveable. Maybe it’s because I see myself, or what I want of myself in both of them, Alex being unapologetically bisexual and intent on getting what he wants, and Henry so ready to stand up for himself and the fact he wants to become a writer.

You’d think a book focused around international politics could distract from the heart of Alex and Henry’s relationship, because there is just as much about what it’s like for Alex as the First Son as there is about his relationship with Henry. However, it adds to the stakes of their relationship in a way I’ve never seen in a romance book, and honestly? It has made politics mildly interesting.

I’ve never read a romance book that is so wholesome. That when the main couple is faced with an obsticle both parties are so sure of their relationship that they are willing to stick it out through everything. I think one of the worst parts of romance novels is the silly few chapters just in the middle where the couple has broken up and it’s all pining. The narrator never does anything about it, they just sit and pine and wait for everything to fix itself. Red, White and Royal Blue doesn’t do that. Alex feels Henry pulling away? He fucking fights for him. He takes it on himself to get him back and make things okay. It’s refreshing.

Maybe I’ve fallen so quickly in love with this book because it’s queer. Because there’s something satisfying of seeing myself in fiction, though on a much larger, much messier scale. It makes me feel like not all good fairytale romance is heterosexual couples and dainty girls with tall manly men. That love comes in many forms, and it can be so blinding.

Alongside cringey romance as a genre, another guilty pleasure of mine has always been the use of multimedia in books. Whether that be post it notes like in Beth O’Leary’s Flat Share or in this case the use of emails used between Henry and Alex to annunciate their adoration in such an honest and profound way they just can’t say out loud. It gets me so invested I physically can’t put the book down, which I found surprising as the chapters are so fucking long! Adding to this, the use of excerpts at the end of the emails from historical figures who had once tried to love or classics that paved the way we look at romance today made me feel more feelings than I was ready to feel for this book. Paragraphs so beautifully written, so heartfelt, and sometimes so upsettingly heartbreaking, it added that sense of ‘shit they are so fucking in love’ in a way that couldn’t always be shown while the two were tiptoeing around their relationship going public.

Outside of the main romantic relationship, the platonic and family relationships were just as wonderful. Alex and June and Henry and Bea were everything I wished me and brother were. Every character had the others backs 100% and in no way was there any sort of toxicity. McQuinston did well of teasing annoying love triangles, Nora being so close with Alex despite them being exes, the damage control of the two having to fake date again threatening Alex questioning everything and falling back into familiarity with Nora rather than risking it with Henry. The sudden introduction of Liam. But no matter what I thought was about to happen, it was Alex and Henry through it all.

Of course there were faults. There were more grammatical errors than I could usually stand in a book, and of course I picked every single one out. It’s the aspiring editor in me, I’m sorry. But the storyline made it so worth it. There were a few points where I got myself confused, because a line that could have such an impact was just missed out for a time jump, and it was always in very detrimental parts of the book where I had to try and figure out what was going on. At it’s heart though, Red, White and Royal Blue was exactly what I needed after fantasy book after fantasy book. It was just the right amount of gross and adorable.