Red, White & Royal Blue

I have this problem where the more I love a book, the more difficult it is for me to write a meaningful review. The more strongly I feel, the harder I find it to be objective and constructive, and just end up gushing. Sooo... spoiler alert: I LOVED this book.

The dialogue was probably my favorite thing about this book. It hums along like a well-oiled machine and the humor is well-timed, well-tuned, and had me chuckling out loud countless times. Their expressions are “now”, which amused me a lot, though it makes me wonder how well it'll age (well, I hope, because it's a super fun book!). The core characters are charming and compelling, with enough flaws to keep them down-to-earth, and the journey is an incredibly enjoyable ride. The enemies-to-lovers situation is fairly quick, but earned, as the groundwork for the evolution of the relationship, I think, was quite well constructed.

The periphery characters are maybe not the most fleshed out, but they were still distinctive and affable, and I felt a lot of affection for them when they would pop up here and there.

I really especially loved the handling of sexual orientation, and that it wasn't a magical light bulb moment. I feel like McQuiston took great care to make sure that this self discovery made sense, with some very believable reflective interior dialogue and anecdotes from that character's past that served as a very sturdy foundation for their revelation and the relationship that unfolds.

I also really appreciate that, while the relationship itself was between two men, one character's bisexuality wasn't just forgotten once they got together, and was referenced (in a casual and natural manner) many times throughout the book. From reading other comments and reviews, it appears that many Bi folks found this to be respectful and meaningful rep, which I dig.

The alternate history feels kind of weird since it's re-envisioning that last few years rather than capital-H history with some distance to the presence. This isn't a negative at all; I don't know how common recent alternate histories are, but I've not read anything like that before, so I found it kind of surreal. But, in the end, it was something I found to be quite interesting and exciting to read.

Was the climax and resolution kind of over-the-top and not entirely believable? Absolutely, yes. And look, your milage may vary on this one, but I personally feel like this brand of willful optimism and idealism is incredibly important these days, and was so refreshing to read. I love my melancholy, but I think a spoonful of sugar is a healthy thing. RW&RB scratched a similar itch for me that Schitt's Creek did with its portrayal of David and Patrick. Maybe we don't yet live in a world where this story would end like that in real life, but dammit, I wish we did! And if we can't have that in our books, movies, or TV shows, then, I dunno, that's really sad to me.

If you want a zippy, affable, easy-to-read rom-com where the stakes feel really high, but also gives you the warm-n-fuzzies, then, you honestly couldn't do much better than Red, White & Royal Blue. I absolutely adored it!