The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing 

Pages: 454

Rating: ★★★★



Synopsis

American Rebecca Porter was never one for fairy tales. Her twin sister, Lacey, has always been the romantic who fantasized about glamour and royalty, fame and fortune. Yet it's Bex who seeks adventure at Oxford and finds herself living down the hall from Prince Nicholas, Great Britain's future king. And when Bex can't resist falling for Nick, the person behind the prince, it propels her into a world she did not expect to inhabit, under a spotlight she is not prepared to face.

Dating Nick immerses Bex in ritzy society, dazzling ski trips, and dinners at Kensington Palace with him and his charming, troublesome brother, Freddie. But the relationship also comes with unimaginable baggage: hysterical tabloids, Nick's sparkling and far more suitable ex-girlfriends, and a royal family whose private life is much thornier and more tragic than anyone on the outside knows. The pressures are almost too much to bear, as Bex struggles to reconcile the man she loves with the monarch he's fated to become.

Which is how she gets into trouble.

Now, on the eve of the wedding of the century, Bex is faced with whether everything she's sacrificed for love-her career, her home, her family, maybe even herself-will have been for nothing.

My Thoughts

I have tried to read this book so many times. The minute I heard about it I knew that I had to read it so the day that it went on sale I went to Square Books in my small college town of Oxford, Mississippi only to find out that they did not have it. So I decided to wait until after finals to read it. But for some reason I chose to read the awful Vacationers instead. Then I went on to finish Outlander and when I could finally fit it in, none of the Barnes & Noble's near me had it. So when I was finally able to lay hands on the hard cover of this book I was so excited to dive in. 

This book is best described as Kate Middleton fan-fiction -- hence why I absolutely had to read it. All the characters are easy to compare to the real life members of the Kate and Will story. It was easy to take what I was reading and apply it to their story, but at the same time the characters were also able to stand alone in their own way. Not only was I in love with Nick and Bex, I was genuinely interested in the secondary characters as well. Cocks and Morgan were careful to be sure that they were just as developed and interesting as the main characters.  I fell in love with all them so easily which really made it hard to put down when it was all over. 

The story is told from Bex's perspective and starts the night before the big royal wedding. This teases some big scandal that you eventually get to towards the end of the book. We then rewind back to Bex's first day at Oxford and from that point her story continues chronologically. 

This book is everything that I wanted. A funny love story with well-rounded characters, a little bit of wish-fulfillment but also emotional journeys that feel real. Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan really did a great job at creating a look at what the royal family looks like from the inside -- and it's not as glamorous as we might think.

My Favorite Line

I hung up the phone and tapped it lightly against my chin, then wrapped myself tighter in my giant woolen cardigan and poured another glass of boxed wine — the official drink of emotionally confused women on a budget.