Review - The Royal We

The Royal We

​​by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan

​​454 pages

​​Release date 04/07/2015

​​3 out of 5 stars

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​​According to the publisher, “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.

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​​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.

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​​Which is how she gets into trouble.

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​​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.”

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​​Fun fact:  this is the first book I’ve ever read that was written by a pair of authors, instead of a single writer.  I don’t feel that this really had any bearing on the book, but I still found it interesting!

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​​Anyway, this book tells the story of the British Royal family.  This version doesn’t feature William and Harry, but instead characters who seem almost exactly based off of them with different names.  In this version, William is definitely Nick.  To spice things up, instead of falling for a born-for-the-spotlight British girl, Nick falls in love with American Bex.  We also have Nick’s brother Freddie, who is a lovable scamp, much like another Royal we all know and love (* cough * Harry * cough *).  While the authors weren’t the most creative in developing original characters, they did make enough differences from the Will and Kate story to keep this interesting.

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​​I’ve said it here before - I am crazy for the Royal family and will happily consume any royal-adjacent media, but I didn’t love this.  My main problem with the book was that it was simply far too long for the content in it.  There were quite a few moments in the book that felt unnatural, as if the authors were throwing unnecessary elements into the plot, which the book would have read much more smoothly without.  Nick and Bex have so many obstacles standing in the way of their love that it became unbelievable.  By the end, I truly felt that the book would have been much more enjoyable if it had been about 150 pages shorter.

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​​That being said, if you are a fan of the Royal family, I think you will enjoy this book.  It has a lot of fun moments, and it was interesting to imagine how close this could to be to the real inner workings of Kate and Will’s relationship.  Overall, I am glad I read this book.

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