Recommendations from our site
“Queer writers banded together and were like: we want to be happy in books. We want to show hope. Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston did this particularly well. That was a pivotal one. I saw Casey recently and they referred to the book as ‘cotton candy,’ which I feel categorizes it pretty well. Even something as simple as the pastel colors of the book itself—I think Red, White, and Royal Blue focused mainly on the enjoyment of falling in love.” Read more...
Aaron Aceves, Novelist
“The months in pre-publication of Red, White and Royal Blue took everybody by storm. It’s just come out in the US and it’s already a breakout. It stood out, for me, because of the royal connection. In romance, the royals have always been big; it’s a sub-genre, and all the tropes that come along with that. But Red, White and Royal Blue was interesting to me because of the United States politics side of it.In the book, the tabloids feed this tension between the US president’s son Alex, and his Royal Highness Prince Henry—a fictional Prince Henry. They don’t really like each other at all, but they have to smooth over this huge international mishap, and it turns into a media frenzy. So they sit down and have to agree to go out and pose as “best” friends. But as Alex and Henry are thrown together, they enter into a real secret relationship.There’s a lot of layers of politics in this story, which seems to be something that readers are looking for right now, especially younger romance readers. That’s because American politics is such an important thing to people right now, especially if they’re on social media. They like to exchange what’s happening and try to make sense of it and this book is really excellent for that.And for those of you who don’t know, Red, White and Royal Blue is a male-male romance.” Read more...
The Best Romance Books: 2019 Summer Reads
Frannie Cassano, Librarian
