The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

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Are you wanting to add a little romance to your reading life? Boy, do I have the book for you! I am not sure how I heard about this book, a blog I read, Amazon best selling books, goodreads.com, or my library recommendations, but I am thankful for whoever recommended it.

The book is titled The Royal We written by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan. Before I had M I was pretty current on pop culture, now I have really fallen off the wagon, and have no idea what is going on in the real world. Even though I am living under a rock these days I know Prince Harry is getting married to Meghan Markle very soon, which made me want to read this book even more.  The Royal We has been dubbed a Kate Middleton fanfiction novel. So, it is more loosely based on Prince William and Kate Middleton than Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, even though Bex is American.

The Royal We is definitely a modern day fairytale. You have Bex Porter, an American exchange student who came to Oxford for the year to study. Of course, she just happens to end up living in the same campus housing as Prince Nicholas of Wales. When they first meet it isn’t the sweep you off your feet instantly romance. Bexs actually doesn’t even recognize him as he carries her bags up to her room and she makes jokes about the portraits of past kings. When she finds out later that day she is completely modified.

Bex doesn’t really see much of Nick at first–he is gone a lot and very private. One day, a few months later, she bumps into him while she is on a run and their friendship blooms. Nick is able to be himself around her which puts him at ease and makes him seek out Bexs more and more. They start hanging out at night, watching bad tv, and eating American junk food.

After a few more months of living this way their relationship starts to turn more romantic, and as you can imagine gets very complicated. Bexs ends up staying in England and for several years they have a secret relationship.

As you could probably guess, having a secret relationship starts to become harder and harder. Bex can’t go out with her boyfriend in public, she can’t talk about her boyfriend, they haven’t met each other’s family, etc. It is a struggle. But when it slips out the media goes CRAZY! Nick, being the gentleman that he is, wants to protect Bex from the media, but Bex’s twin sister is obsessed with being famous and possibly being related to the royal family. The sister isn’t the most discrete member of the family which causes Nick to put pressure on Bex to keep her in check.

Of course, having a media hungry sister is one thing, but even worse than her sister… the fact that Bex is American and therefore not future queen material.  Bex starts to struggle with her identity and feeling like a shell of who she actually is. She has become more polished, more stylish, but it is still pretty clear that the royal family wants nothing to do with her.

The Royal We is written backward; starting the day before the wedding and moving back over the last eight years of their relationship, starting on the first day they met. It is such a fun story because you are constantly asking yourself is the wedding going to happen and what happened to make us (the reader) even question its possibility.

Nick and Bexs are really great characters, you just fall in love with them. The character development throughout the whole book is really fun. Nick and Bex have a nice mix of irritating and idiotic moments, but they also have a healthy mix of delightful and wise moments too. But I also really liked most of the characters in this book including Bex’s dad, such a great, wise, loving man, and Nick’s younger brother Freddie, who is funny, wild, crazy, but has a sweeter side too. They definitely made up a majority of the parts I liked best in the book.

And you have to give a huge nod to the writers of this book. What makes this book so funny is the writing. There is just one funny or witty line after another. Nick and Bex and Bex’s dad are very witty. I want to stress though, you don’t feel the writers trying to be funny, they are just funny. There is a big difference. When a writer is ‘trying to be funny” you can sometimes feel it and the joke falls flat. There is no point in this book where I felt that. Which makes the book one I would definitely read again because I just loved the banter and witty-ness of this book!

After I finished The Royal We I got on goodreads.com and looked at some of the other reviews. One reviewer said “This book was overly wordy at some points. It made it seem like a chore to get thru some parts of the book.” This actually translated to a few other reviews, and I can agree with this. It could have used a little trim, maybe 50-100 pages. I think part of the problem was all of the supporting characters, which looking back I don’t even really remember half of them. While a few of the supporting characters are necessary to move the story along less would’ve been better.

If you are interested in reading The Royal We, I want to make sure you know this is definitely a chick-lit novel. If you enjoy chick-lit by Sophie Kinsella or Liane Moriarty you will probably like this book too. If not, I wouldn’t recommend this book to you. There is sex, drinking, and some swearing. This would make such a fun summer read! I can just see you picking up this book and reading it on the beach or by the pool. It is a pretty fun read that I had a hard time pulling myself out of.

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If you’ve readThe Royal We, I would LOVE to hear what you thought, even if you didn’t like it.