"When his mother became President of the United States, 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 an 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 and state and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: Stage a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instagrammable 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 presidential campaign and upend two nations. It raises 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?"
This is a bit of an unusual blog post because today I'm not reviewing a book I've already read, I'm sharing a book I WANT to read! Why? Uh...because! This is a book that I have been waiting to read for quite some time, and I badly wanted to have a review ready to go for today. That wasn't in the cards, but I decided hey, there are no rules! I can still talk about it! So, here we go.
Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. What is it that drew me to this book? First and foremost, a lovely friend and former colleague of mine with whom I love to talk books recommended it to me. Both of us enjoy Young Adult fiction, and we are particular fans of LGBTQIA stories, so when he shared this book with me, I was pretty much already like alright, I don't even need to know anything else about it. Basically an LGBTQIA version of First Daughter or Chasing Liberty? Hello, nostalgia - I'm in. I added my name to the wait list at my library and settled in to wait.
While I waited, Red, White & Royal Blue kept popping up on book lists, so I read a little more about it here and there, I started following the author on social media, and I discovered that there is a bot account on Twitter that tweets random lines from the book! I may very well have spoiled myself without realizing it at some point, but reading some of those one-liners really whet my appetite for the book.
Finally, there's the cover. I don't know what it is, but sometimes I see a book cover and am like I. Need. That. Often it happens without knowing anything about a book at all - I just see the cover and something irresistible inside me says "read that book." It happened with Emergency Contact, for instance. Literally knew nothing about the book, had never heard of it or of Mary H.K. Choi, but I saw the book when I was working in our teen section one day and could not get it out of my head. Granted, with this book I knew a little bit about it, but still. I saw the cover, and something about it made my brain or my heart, whichever makes my book-reading decisions (both?) latch onto it. It isn't even a choice at this point, really, I'll never be able to rest if I don't read it! 😉
So...there you have it. I'll be starting Red, White & Royal Blue today, and I cannot wait! (Side note: If you are friends with me on Goodreads, please don't look at my "currently reading" list after seeing that. I may or may not be concurrently reading too many books right now, but I can't help it.) Maybe I'll update when I finish to let you know if it lived up to my internal hype. In the meantime, what are you looking forward to reading?
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