REVIEW: The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

4 out of 5 stars     ★★★★☆

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.

The Royal We is every young woman’s fantasy come to life—common girl meets and falls in love with a prince then they are on a whirlwind romance with no problems at all. It’s easy to imagine a life like that, and specifically a royal life: free from harm, drama, or problems in general. The picture painted by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan (from gofugyourself.com) is how little control one has once they enter into a royal family.

Of course, this may have been obvious, but the book is clearly Kate Middleton fan fiction and that’s not a bad thing! And what The Royal We does best is gives me some perspective on her life and how she made the same transformation from common woman to royalty. I absolutely imagined her as Bex. If I remember anything from the pre-wedding Kate Middleton, it’s that she did not look as glamorous or flawless as she appears now, and I know that it has everything to do with being in the royal family. And it makes me sympathetic to her life and how much she likely sacrificed for the sake of her marriage.

But this post isn’t about Kate Middleton, it’s about the characters. When Rebecca “Bex” Porter enters Nick’s life, she’s herself, but when she becomes the fiancée, her life and herself is thrown out the window for what the royal family necessitates she become. A character of her former self. The decent into madness, as I like to refer to it, is sympathetic. It’s terrifying. Many contemporary books like these focus on how one comes to accept themselves as they are, but this takes that trope and flips it over. How does one accept themselves within the greater whole? Is there a self left? These concepts are strange and they strain the relationships of everyone close to Bex.

Like many relationships, a lot of problems can usually be solved with communication, and that is no exception with the relationships in this book. It’s hard to communicate, but when all the problems start to come together and they are not able to be hidden, it can really break some people up. Every time I see it in a book, I want to scream at the characters for not being more open, but feelings are hard and it’s not always as easy as it seems—some people might be out at sea with intermittent access to email, for example.

What I appreciate most about this book is the time and effort it took to flush out the characters and the royal family. In the beginning, I was thrown off by all the friends that surrounded them at Oxford, but it took me a while to understand their place in the circle of Nick and Freddie, and the entire royal family. Like other parts of the book that were taken from history, the royal family is eerily similar to the British monarchy. There’s a whole article about how the royal family came to be in the book that is well worth the read.

One of my favorite characters ended up being Nick’s brother Freddie, who showed true depth by the end and I really like how his relationship with Bex developed, mistakes and all. If there were to ever be a sequel, I hope it would focus on Freddie.

Overall, this book really held on to me. I took a long time to read it because I didn’t want it to end. And even though it’s about a royal family, there are real emotions I could connect to (I definitely cried on the subway, no shame). Nick and Bex felt like a real relationship and I am glad I was along for the ride.