Red, White & Royal Blue is a novel by Casey McQuiston.
Finished on: 7.11.2023

Plot:
Alex Claremont-Diaz is the US-American First Son – the son of the first female president of the United States. Ellen Claremont is running for re-election, and Alex, who is interested in a political career himself, knows that he should be on his best behavior. Unfortunately, when he, his sister June and their best friend Nora, granddaughter of the Vice-President, are invited to the wedding of the English Prince, heir to the throne, Alex also runs into the groom’s younger brother Prince Henry. And Alex has always hated Henry. Things come to a head between them, resulting in a destroyed wedding cake and an international diplomatic disaster. The solution? Alex and Henry have to spend more time with each other to prove to the world that they are actually good friends. They actually do get closer, revealing a lot more complex feelings for each other than anybody anticipated.

Red, White & Royal Blue is sweet but a little insubstantial. I enjoyed it while it lasted, but it is not a keeper for me.

As I read the book, ironically I kept thinking that this may be a gay book in the sense that two men fall in love, but it’s definitely not a queer book. This is ironic because McQuiston is queer themself and set out to write the book for queer people, providing the representation they themself were missing. The thing is, queerness for me is more than “not hetero/not cis”, it actually calls into question all the structures that are founded on heteronormativity – from the gender binary to monogamy up to and including capitalism. Red, White & Royal Blue does none of the questioning, none of the criticism. Instead it’s all about letting gay people participate in heteronormativity. And this reads extremely weird. Overall I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was written for straight people who can prove to themselves how open-minded they are, they even like gay romance, without ever having to consider their own place in a heteronormative world.

It is no surprise that this book got the big successful movie treatment. Despite some surprisingly explicit sex scenes, it is about as innocous and inoffensive as a gay romance about the Royal and the First Family can be.

I did like the characters. June was my absolute favorite but generally, the were vibrant and engaging and came off the page despite the fact that McQuiston, to me, really has no ear for dialects (I don’t have it either, so when I find fault with that, there is something seriously wrong). Sometimes the minor characters do feel a little too much like they were set up to tick representation checkboxes, but I’d rather have it this way than no representation at all.

As I said, I enjoyed this, and it was lovely to get a bisexual main character. I feel like this is still a rarity and as a bisexual myself, I am always looking for stories about us, especially when they aren’t about the bi person cheating (the bar is low, I know). But altogether, this didn’t really give me what I’d hoped for.

Summarizing: okay.