#who decided to publish this president!hillary au sdfghjkl

[dracomort]

Is there a reason why you dislike Red, White and Royal Blue?

Honestly, I read it and enjoyed most of it, but the ending I hated. But that's just me, I like fluff, but that ending was something else...

What is your gripe with the book?

RWRB fans keep scrolling. I'll try to keep it nice (post-writing edit: this was not kept nice) but I really disliked this book. I am also NOT AN AMERICAN and I think that makes the biggest impact on enjoyment of this book. If it were a romcom between a random American boy and British boy then I could critique it on its writing merit alone, but the choice of the author to engage with politics in such a brainless manner is really symptomatic of the cancer that is modern American liberalism.

Disclaimer: I did not finish this book. It's one of the only books I've ever DNF'd. I paid real monnies to buy the ebook. This waste of $15 is probably why I'm so bitter.

With RWRB it really comes down to four Ps:

Premise, pacing, prose

This is perhaps on me, but when you look at the blurb: "photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids and threaten American/British relations. The plan for damage control: staging a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince."

See now, to me, that premise reads as—fake friendship, enemies/rivals to lovers, where they slowly come to understand what they like about each other. From a narrative pacing perspective, I would expect to see this click for our protagonists at the midpoint or perhaps the climax. Certainly not them having a conversation and resolving all their differences within the first 10% of the book (hospital broom cupboard). It's been a couple years since I (attempted to) read this book, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I strongly feel that they went from hating each other—with no substance to that hate beyond a petty misunderstanding—to resolving their differences, to kissing and fucking, within the first 20% of the book. What is this pacing??

After that I realised that this book should've been pitched with a forbidden love/Romeo & Juliet premise, because clearly that was what the author was going for. I don't necessarily have an issue with that. It's just disappointing to me because it was misleading and I wasted my money on a book that's actual premise doesn't interest me in the slightest. I read romance primarily for the internal conflict within the relationship, not the external conflict, though having both is fab (e.g. Captive Prince).

I'm not quite sure anything happens in this book. The protagonists are 'enemies' for maybe 10 pages and then fuck for the rest of it?? I skipped pages and pages and pages of 'banter' between Alex and those girls, and politics that read like it'd been penned by a 12 year old, and somehow managed to miss nothing. I've never read a book where I could skip so many pages with it having so little material impact on my understanding of the narrative.

I also found the prose and dialogue very... 'aliens guess at the way humans speak based on a diet of nothing but mediocre social media themed fanfiction'. And I say this as a fic writer myself. There's a bunch of female characters that serve no purpose other that to cheerlead the main couple and be wholesome, flawless, quippy and supportive, because that's feminism, baby. I can't speak at length about the characters because I dropped the book pretty early on.

2. POLITICS

RWRB is very much a product of its time and its author's nationality. That it was written and published during the Trump administration is no surprise. I think, just as Cinderella (2021) will be a perfect specimen for future study of the hot mess that is 2020s liberal feminism, RWRB will serve the same for 'left-wing' democrat politics for the 2016-xx political landscape. It's an AU where a while, blonde female presidential candidate wins the election and leaked emails have no effect on the outcome of said election. Jee, I sure wonder who she's meant to be 🙄

I understand that this book was intended as a light-hearted romcom, a silly romance for readers to turn off their brains and enjoy the wholesomeness. But clearly I am not the target audience as I am incapable of turning off my brain under any circumstance, especially not when reading a book. I am also not a romance reader, nor much of a genre fiction reader. Again, not the target audience. I also do not think you get to introduce politics as one of the most prominent themes and then not have your book critiqued on its handling of that subject matter.

I am far too much of a political cynic to read about this wholesome good working-class American political family that hold all the right views and have no flaws. I was disappointed but not surprised as soon as I realised this was really gonna go for the pro-democrat lens. I'm too foreign to view that party as anything more than middling centrists and outright antagonists on the global stage. Perhaps some people enjoy reading books that put them in a fantasy lala land where everything is good and just in the world, but I think this sort of passive idealism is exactly why the USA is a conservative hellscape in the first place.

A goodreads review that articulates my thoughts well: "This is the most idealized, grotesque, good-versus-evil look at politics I have EVER SEEN. In this book, the Democrats are a rainbow-wearing gloriously diverse coalition of kumbaya-singing angels, and everyone else is a villain we won’t talk about. Democrats are 100% motivated purely by the love of Doing The Right Thing, and they have never done anything wrong, ever, in their lives. The American people love them implicitly and will turn historically red states blue just to show them that. It’s not only sickening, it’s damaging. DO NOT IDEALIZE POLITICIANS."

And even moving away from politics to just address the wealth and privilege of these characters who fly back and forth over the pond on private jets to see each other... like, I don't have an issue with rich MCs (tbh Henry should be exactly my fave type), but I do have an issue with the desperate, self-aware attempts the author makes to keep things 'progressive'. Yeah, sure the characters lampshade their privilege. But these themes are not engaged with in any meaningful way, to the point where I wish they'd been excluded entirely. If you're going to write a book about the top 0.000001%'s issues, at least be unapologetic about it. If you keep mentioning privilege but do nothing about it then it feels hollow and insincere. I have nothing but contempt for philanthropy, so don't get me started on that.

Bonus: (not a P but) Anglophilia

As a foreigner from a culture closer to the UK than the US, the British fetishism vibes were pretty hilarious. I am certainly not gonna call it 'problematic' (I hate that word regardless). It's just cringe and excruciating to read. No one talks like that! No one. Not even the Prince of England.

Edit: this goodreads reviewer really gets it