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- 07/08/2021
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Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are based on the authors' lives and experiences and may be changed to protect personal information. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
WL's Mainstream Gay Book Reviews - 4. Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41150487-red-white-royal-blue
Modern “Social Media”-Driven Narrative, Gay, Social commentary, Comedic, and Political, so pardon my language, but Fuck Yes, it’s everything I want in a gay fiction novel. I’ve tried my hand at doing social commentary, social media driven stories, and politics as an amateur author, but it never felt quite so right as how this story melded all those elements together. This story is to me equivalent to Aaron Sorkin’s American President from 1995 meets Sorkin’s The Social Network from 2010, a modern 21st century political comedy in the age of instant news cycle. I know not everyone liked this novel: the comedy is too modern, the scandal is too “vogue” (an UK Royal having a homosexual affair with an US President’s child, I am just waiting until the odds make this a reality), and the characters are too perfectly imperfect to be real (This aspect is what reminded me of Sorkin-style characters, too perfectly imperfect). However, essentially, the most popular types of stories come from such elements.
In this novel, the focus is on Alex Claremont-Diaz, the son of first female US President Ellen Claremont from Texas and California US Senator Oscar Diaz. He has a reputation as a playboy with celebrity girls and actresses, but has never considered anything about his sexuality. He was rivals with UK prince, Henry.
FYI, Henry’s long last name included Windsor, so I assumed this is a fictional version of current Royal family with elements of various royals embedded in the character. I honestly must admit, I’ve read more than a few Prince Harry Fan-fictions as a closeted gay teen, so I am used to the storyline of closeted royal prince falling in love with an American. I am not sure if Casey McQuiston intended to be nostalgic about those old internet fan-fiction stories, but if she is, Kudos to her.
After a highly public incident involving a very expensive wedding cake, Alex and Henry are forced into a “pretend” friendship by their mutual political handlers. Photo-ops, tweets, and all the glamour of twentysomething political dog and pony show glosses over something real developing between them. Henry opened up to Alex about his false public image, his family issues including his sister’s drug abuse after their father’s death, and ultimately his seemingly unrequited love for Alex with a secret kiss. Alex went from confident millennial playboy to questioning to accepting bisexual after a few chapters of soul searching, realizing some of his own past boyhood experiments were more than just “fun”, and began understanding himself.
At this point in the story, I was hooked to the storyline due to the dynamic characters and plot setup. Henry is a closeted gay prince, who has to maintain a false image of being straight, but is suffocating underneath the false imagery concocted to be “socially acceptable”. Alex, on the other hand being bisexual comes with a different set of issues, he can hide who he is throughout his life without a second thought, because it was simplest route to reach his final aims of pursuing a career in politics, even as a progressive Liberal Democrat among a family of progressive. Both had expectations, Henry’s expectations were thrusted on him by his background, Alex’s expectations were self-inflicted by trying to exceed. Add to the fact, these two guys were public figures with a constant stream of media events, interviews, and political socialites. Everything done by them was magnified a hundred-fold in importance, which reminds me so much of Sorkin’s films, alongside the speedy wit of characters speaking being almost akin to a West Wing episode.
Throughout their budding relationship we have amazing Romantic comedy elements, I’ll just list a few of my favorites:
1. Turkey Vengeance: I get why Alex did it and he’s being very fiscally responsible in his actions. However, as a New Englander who has gobbled my fair share of the bird, Turkeys can be aggressive. Interesting animal fact, Young Turkeys like to dominate others, who they view as subordinate to them. Alex, darling those birds pegged you for a bottom from the moment they laid eyes on you and as a reader, I cannot disagree. 
2. 2. The Karaoke party: If you want drunken debauchery with friends and partner, there’s nothing like a few rounds of drinks, campy costume glam, and wild sing-a-long.
3. 3. All the text and emails: Yes, this blew up in Alex and Henry’s faces due to a hack of the White House servers, but I am really glad they communicated like this organically throughout the story. There were many funny quotes from a variety of sources from English authors to US Historical figures. Funny snippets of historical exchanges between potential LGBT lovers in undisclosed affairs really brighten up the narrative, it adds a timeless flavor to the story.
If Wikileaks were to ever release something like this, sure you can spin it as “gay agenda” or whatever, but honestly when reading their story through texts and emails, I was mesmerized by their simple love story. I hope if a scandal like this were ever to break, people will read the actual material rather than a “curated” version of the truth.
4. 4. The Powerpoint Sex-Ed from President Mom: OMG, I felt so bad for Alex throughout this scene. He had just come out to his mother earlier that day, so she took him into a conference room alone, ordered cartons of Chinese food and made a presentation about having a love affair with a foreign head of state. When she asked point blank, “Did you make gay booty calls with taxpayer money?” I was rolling on the floor laughing. It’s the type of scene you won’t find anywhere, except this novel.
5. 5. The Hotel Room and Closet Scene: Comedic genius, I could not stop laughing imagining this scene. The White House Chief of Staff walking into the First Son and his Gay lover, a Prince of England no less, in a hotel, where the Democratic National Convention was, and in the middle of a public relations disaster when the opposition had scored a major endorsement from a gay Progressive independent. If this book becomes a movie, they had better make this scene right, because it is by far the best comedically timed and toned scene in the entire book.
Beyond the comedic situations, I have to say I love the supporting cast:
June Claremont is a complicated woman, who wants to report news and present reality for our information generation, but is overshadowed by politics. Ellen Claremont is trying to keep her Presidency in tact and run for a second term, while still trying to be a good caring mother for her children. Oscar Diaz, who is divorced from the sitting US President and a US senator, is a delightful supportive father, who wants his children to embrace who they are fully not just what is most acceptable according to Pollsters, in his eyes Alex’s bi-sexuality and bi-racial status should not be hidden or submerge for Politics.
Other characters: Nora is a wonderful bisexual character, she’s the nerdy best friend and open free thinker, who Alex can turn to, not to mention she was one of his ex-lovers. She’s also the person who eventually saves Alex and President Claremont’s political life after the scandal broke through “proactive” investigation. While it’s true modern Conservatives are very tech savvy, despite professing aversions to scientific theory, it is also true their dogmatic routine hamper creativity; Nora is a modern data scientist archetype as long as you use logic to rationalize your actions you can’t escape her ability to seek out the source. An old axiom that Politicians use, “Knowledge is power” is very true in the information age, but it is not the full truth. Nora represents something Liberally-minded intelligent individual should emulate and Conservative tech backers should fear, my corollary to the political theory is that “the source of knowledge is weakness”. That’s a lesson that should be learned from this character.
Another character with remarkable staying power, Rafael Luna, an openly gay independent senator, who was playing the long game to bring down a sexual predator, who turns out to be the Republican nominee for President. His story is interesting and very subtle, it took me two reading to understand it and his long game. He also has an interesting love of Skittles.
Finally, the story was amazing from the references to the banter. The relationship was fun and the conflicts between Alex and Henry were very grounded despite who they were, as a reader, I completely understood their predicament.
Rating: 5 out of 5 from me, it’s one of my favorite novels and represents both Gen Y/Millennials and Gen Z/Post-Millennial, who enjoy modernity and ideas about communication, relationships, and sexual variability.
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I have heard rumors of a movie deal being done on this, for fans of this book for the last 2 years, it would be amazing. I wonder who would be cast as
Alex and Henry.
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Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are based on the authors' lives and experiences and may be changed to protect personal information. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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