Author
Red, White & Royal Blue
In Casey McQuiston’s romantic comedy, Alex Claremont-Diaz, the ambitious son of the president of the United States, has long regarded Britain’s Prince Henry as an aloof rival. After a public confrontation creates an international embarrassment, their families and advisers require them to perform a carefully managed friendship. Private messages and reluctant encounters gradually overturn Alex’s assumptions, and the staged reconciliation becomes a secret romance with consequences for a presidential election and the British monarchy. The novel combines an enemies-to-lovers courtship with an optimistic alternative version of contemporary politics. Beneath its banter and public-relations crises, it examines the tension between private identity and inherited duty. Alex and Henry must decide whether protecting powerful institutions is worth concealing themselves—and whether honesty can become a form of political as well as personal courage.