Book Review: The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

Format: Ebook

Pages: 464 pages

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Published: April 7, 2015

Genre: Fiction & Literature, Romance

Synopsis:

“American Rebecca Porter was never one for fairy-tales. Her twin sister Lacey was always the romantic, the one who daydreamed of being a princess. But it’s adventure-seeking Bex who goes to Oxford and meets dreamy Nick across the hall – and thus Bex who accidentally finds herself in love with the eventual heir to the British throne. Nick is everything she could have imagined, but Prince Nicholas has unimaginable baggage: grasping friends, a thorny family, hysterical tabloids tracking his every move, and a public that expected its future king to marry a native. On the eve of the most talked-about wedding of the century, Bex reflects on what she’s sacrificed for love — and exactly whose heart she may yet have to break.”

I had high expectations for this one. Some of the reviews I read for it were decent. I love reading about British history so an adaptation based off a real-life royal romance was really interesting and a great jump-off point. It had great promise on being a terrific, however, I wish I could say that for this book. It was not bad but it wasn’t great either. It had a lot of promise but it just continued to get wrong at every turn.

At first the story moved along perfectly. There were the romantic moments that I found extremely touching. Bex’s and Nick’s blossoming courtship was rampant with humor and wit written beautifully. I was absorbed into the story immediately. But as I entered the second and third parts, I came to the realization that this book was unnecessarily long. There was so much going on I had hard time believing that all things that were  being thrown out there had anything to do with the main story-line. I get it.You are adapting from the lives of a real life royal family so it is understandable to throw in some royal scandals in the mix. But these outlandish (a little bit silly) “royal scandals” put too much extra weight on the story that was just an unnecessary heavy burden.

As I said before , when the story entered part two, the trajectory of the story went off a tangent while at the same time he personalities of the main characters drastically changed. There was just so much drinking and partying going on that I started getting turned off and started quickly reading through some of those scenes.This is one of those plot lines that I had time believing that it had anything to do with the plot. I started missing the concise and beautiful detailing that was in the beginning. I don’t know what happened but it felt like a completely different author jumped in.

Although, the ending was sweet and touching, returning to its original element, it did seem rushed and lacking any sustenance. The “revelations”, albeit were a nice twist and came out of nowhere, felt empty and flawed. Of all the unnecessary descriptions that occurred in the book, this part I felt it really needed some. All these revelations, suppose to tie everything together, just gave us one abrupt ending.

Despite its flaws, this was a romantic and touching royal love story. It does have the makings of a sequel book. Hopefully in that case it will be more concise and the length will be shorter.

Overall rating: 3 out of 5 stars.

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