Book Review

The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

So Sarah sent out an email saying “I have an ARC of the Fug Girls’ new book, who wants it?”  If this had been in real life, there probably would have been a scrum for it, with me pulling hair and Elyse siccing Dewey (her cat) on my face and both of us maybe biting in order to get it into our grabby hands, but this was for e-versions and no actual fighting was needed.  Thankfully.

This is the latest New Adult offering from the Fug Girls, the ladies behind Go Fug Yourself.  I am a devoted follower of their Royalty tag, and find their head canons of what life with Wills, Kate, and erstwhile brother-in-law Harry (with his habit of bringing home animals and befriending small children across the globe) is like.  This book takes some of those ideas and expanding them into a modern fairy tale.

Bex is a American college student who starts a semester abroad at Oxford to discover that the hot boy across the hall?  Is second in line to the British throne.  Through college, the British paparazzi culture, backstabbing friends, interesting family dynamics, and an alternate history version of True Blood, they sort out life and love and how to relationship when the world is watching.

RHG:  I don’t go for real person fic (where the people are alive) but this is pointedly not.  it’s inspired by William and Kate (and Harry) but pointedly not supposed to be some version of their story.

Elyse: I also liked that this wasn’t Will and Kate, although their relationship followed similar patterns. What did you think of them making Bex an American instead of British?

RHG: I thought that was a really good way of making it SUPER clear that this wasn’t Will and Kate, and I also liked that they went with a Alternate History British Royal Family where Edward VII’s first born survived to follow his father, rather than his younger brother who in reality become George V.  I kind of wish that the family tree included all of the alternate royals they mentioned (I like charts and trees, I’m weird), because I did spend an annoying amount of time trying to sort it out.

You know that Nick is an AU Wills, and Freddie is an AU Harry, and that it’s like the universe needs a pair of brother princes.  There’s a mother that’s not available without being dead, and what might be a very different relationship with their father.  I really liked the thought the Fug Girls put into creating the family and how it worked.

Elyse: The Freddie/Nick relationship was something I loved. Even though they are brothers and drive each other crazy sometimes, it’s totally them vs the world and their father.

I thought the authors really nailed having complicated secondary characters. At first I thought Prince Richard was just a dick (ha!) but then you see him with Emma and a more complex picture emerged. I also thought they did a great job of keeping Freddie from just being a playboy. Half of his behavior is designed to take some of Richard’s ire off Nick. As the “spare,” Freddie sees it as his job to protect Nick a bit. Overall the nuances of the royal family relationships was really well done.

RHG: What did you think of how the relationship story went?  I bought it completely- that Nick and Bex would bond over bootlegs of Not!True Blood and given that she’s not one of his subjects-to-be that she isn’t quite in the same level of awe of him.  I felt so bad that they both felt like they had to hide their relationship and the toll that took on Bex (I mean, it probably took a toll on Nick, too, but the book is from her perspective).

Elyse: I think I was a little surprised at how much time Bex and Nick spend apart in the book. It takes a long time for the romance to come to fruition and there are also significant periods of time that they are apart.

With the exception of the conflict at the end, this wasn’t structured like a traditional romance in my view. For me it read more like a book about Bex finding herself with a strong romance element than a traditional romance novel. I don’t read a ton of New Adult so maybe that’s why the structure felt different to me.

RHG:  Yeah, I think that’s it.  I mean, it’s New Adult without the darkness and rapeyness and weird stalker behavior that tends to float through the genre, but part of the idea of New Adult is figuring out who you are as a person, and Bex needed to do that just in general (she starts as a college student, they all need to do that) and Nick needs to figure out who he is beyond just Future King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven kingdoms and… sorry, no wrong book- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and all that other stuff.

I did like how the Fug Girls- who I do follow, and they do not use papparazzi pictures- did indict papparazzi culture with Bex having a super steep learning curve on how to manage it, and how friends and family can screw you over with that, whether they intend to or not.  I think there are a LOT of people who don’t think about the human cost of some of those pictures (Kiera Knightly has talked about what it was like to have the paparazzi stalking her when she was 17 and it was horrific.)

Elyse: When the book opens Bex is fairly isolated from the paparazzi because Nick is somewhat protected at college. I think it was important to have that so the reader felt like their relationship developed organically without all the outside bullshit. The Fawkes-o-ween scene was probably my favorite. Nothing says love by pushing someone’s drunk ass around in a wheelbarrow.

I did think it was interesting that for a New Adult, Bex doesn’t have a tragic backstory and/or emotional baggage. She’s well off, has parents who love her and each other, and is close to her sister. Nick is the one with issues. His mother is absent, his father is an asshole, and his family is super dysfunctional (Awful Julian, Nigel, etc). He’s also living in a bubble. It was refreshing to read a royalty book where the heroine doesn’t need rescuing.

RHG: So I’m giving this an A, because it was delightful and I adore the Fug Girls’ version of Harry and Kate and Wills that they’ve created in their heads (“He’s basically Great Britain’s answer to a red squirrel anyway”) and I like how they used that in writing this book.  It also passed the “Did I stay up until 3 am to finish this?  YES I DID” test.  How about you?

Elyse: Totally an A. It wasn’t as heavy in the romance as I wanted but made up for it by being addictive. I too pulled the 3 a.m. read. Plus it’s really funny and heartfelt.

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The Royal We by Heather Cocks

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  1. Ishfet says:

    Am American queen to be?

    Making their child American citizen? Oh I can totally see that. Not.

  2. Tam says:

    Eh, I don’t see why not, to be honest. It’s not as if British monarchs and their heirs haven’t had a long history of marrying foreigners, some from more popular countries than others – I think Diana was more British than Charles. An American middle-class girl would probably go down better with the UK public than a Saudi princess or Russian oligarch’s daughter.

    Mostly I’m entertained by the thought of a Windsor making it into Oxford nowadays. I think that the princes of the previous generation had the Oxbridge curricula tailored to their abilities (to put it kindly), but nowadays, that would NOT happen. Oxbridge doesn’t have a legacy system, and nor can you get in just because your family has money or influence – Tony Blair’s kid didn’t get in, for example.

  3. jamie says:

    Yeah, I cannot take this seriously. Changing some really minor points of family history and tossing in fake True Blood doesn’t mean this isn’t real person fiction. It absolutely is, and more to the point, WHY?

    Kate and William are just not that interesting. I cannot believe the amount of obsession over a couple of royals; it’s pathetic. Who cares?

  4. Sarah says:

    I got this last week as an advance copy and foolishly left it at my desk on Friday, when I had just about reached the final conflict (and I don’t know what it is yet!). I almost went back for it, and I’m definitely finishing it today.

    I don’t really follow Kate and William (and I hadn’t read the Fug Girls, so I need to now), so I came at this from a “I love chick lit, romance, and I loved my summer abroad in the UK” perspective, so for me it’s just a really well-told story that looks at celebrity culture from the inside, or at least what writers who seem to know a lot about it imagine the inside to be.

  5. Crystal says:

    In processing at the library. First in line.

    WANT NOW.

  6. Violet Bick says:

    I haven’t read the book, but the synopsis reminded me of a Masterpiece Theater program from a few years ago. It was a one off show, not a series, called “The Prince of Hearts.” (But I found it listed on Amazon as “The Student Prince” — not to be confused with the operetta of the same name with singing by Mario Lanza.)

    The PBS show is about a British prince, his bodyguard, and an American student who meet at university. I think in this case the prince was supposed to be based on Prince Edward (i.e., younger brother of Prince Charles and Prince Andrew), but the plot is more along the lines of Cyrano de Bergerac.

    The American student is played by Tara Fitzgerald, so I don’t know how confident to be in her believability as an American. But the film also stars Rupert Penry-Jones and Robson Green, way before I knew who either of these guys were. But now I’m all Rupert Penry-Jones — Whitechapel! And Robson Green — Grantchester! I have to watch this again! Luckily my library system has the DVD, so I’m going to check it out.

    And I’ve also requested the book because the synopsis and praise have piqued my interest. I too hope it will be a 3 a.m. read for me — those are so nice, and so rare, to have!

  7. Violet Bick says:

    By the way, the one thing that keeps throwing me is the name (nickname?) of the heroine — Bex. Every time I read it, I keep thinking of Becks — David Beckham. (But that would be a completely different story.) I guess I’ve watched “Bend It Like Beckham” too many times.

  8. Elyse says:

    @Violet I thought the same thing about Bex, too. After awhile I just got used to it.

    I’m off to check out that PBS series!

  9. JaniceG says:

    Good news: Amazon is offering a free Kindle preview consisting of the first seven chapters!

  10. Trish says:

    I took advantage of Amazon’s offering the first seven chapters because admittedly I’m a huge royal nerd. I was pleasantly surprised by how good the excerpt was, so I bought the book. I haven’t read it yet because the weather is supposed to be gorgeous this weekend and this looks like the perfect book with which to sit on my porch with a glass of wine.

  11. Elyse says:

    @Trish I’d love to sit on my porch with a glass of wine and read…except it’s 38° and raining here. Spring, you’re kind of an asshole

  12. nabpaw says:

    I’m not a huge fan of the royals, but I love Go Fug Yourself. I read the first seven chapters and got completely sucked in. Once I finish the new Julie Ann Long, I’m going to dive right in and completely enjoy it.

  13. BadIdeaBear says:

    I almost called in sick today just so I could finish reading it. SO GOOD.

  14. Diana says:

    A tiny bit on the fence about this. This book sounds like all those “President’s daughter/son stories” that were big in the 90s and early 00’s. I did not love them, but the fact that a lot of people are saying the book is unputdownable is so tempting! The Fug Girls are awesome, too.

    *dithers anxiously for a hot minute, then 1 click buys* lol

  15. Darlynne says:

    I just finished THE ROYAL WE and, although I don’t know the Fug Girls from anyone else, really enjoyed it. Funny, smart dialog, very likable characters, and–to me–a believable story about what assimilation (for it is that) into The Firm might entail. I don’t even like NA much, but, as with potato chips, I continue to consume them anyway.

  16. I was actually debating whether or not to read this, but you won me over in reading it, it sounds like these authors did great in portraying it realistically.

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