If you enjoy following William, Kate and Harry in the news you will totally enjoy this book. It's a perfect beach/pool book and tells a predictable tale with a twist at the end that I didn't see coming.

It's not great literature but it's fun and cute and I was happy to buy it because I love going to the authors' fashion blog Go Fug Yourself to see their funny commentary on fashion & royalty around the world.

Thumbs up! ( )

Overall, this was good, I guess. As an old GFY fan, I think my expectations were too high. The audiobook narrator was great.

The two main things I disliked:

1. Lacey is the worst. I think we're supposed to sympathize with her and forgive her, but I couldn't. In the beginning, she's supposed to be smart and ruthlessly driven -- it made no sense to me that she would drop out of med school and throw her life away to ride Bex's coattails. Why does no one ever really call her out on that? I wanted Lacey to have more of a reckoning. Just like Clive (who gets the full villain treatment), Lacey felt entitled to get something out of Bex. She treated Bex like a means to an end. Then all is forgiven too suddenly.

2. I used to read Go Fug Yourself regularly and I remember it being really funny, so I expected this book to be at least equal parts rom and com. There were some funny parts, but it was more angsty than amusing. At one point in the book Bex references [b:Bridget Jones's Diary|227443|Bridget Jones's Diary (Bridget Jones, #1)|Helen Fielding|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1558869586l/227443._SY75_.jpg|3185154] and it made me wish I was re-reading that instead. It's occurring to me just now that maybe the audiobook narrator didn't sell the funny parts very well and I would've laughed more if I had read the print book.

So I won't be reading the sequel, but I might go watch The Crown now.
( )

This one lives up to the hype, it's adorable and definitely the top of the genre going deeper than most. Sure it has it's silly soap opera moments but it's still lovable ( )

I thought this book was utterly delightful (except for one incredibly heartbreaking and well-written part), like a long-awaited blockbuster movie with a fantastic cast in which the plot hardly matters. Except in "The Royal We," the plot DOES matter (I cared, anyway!), and it moved at a pace that kept it fascinating and nearly unputdownable. :) I appreciate that the authors set this fictionalized version of the British royal family in England, not a made-up country; in fact, they went to great lengths to create a believable family tree. Unlike so many comparable styles of novels these days, the authors fully developed the minor characters, and made the main characters realistic (somewhat faulted) but still completely endearing. It was a fun story, and a perfect break from the really heavy recent book club picks I've had to slog through.

The only reason I didn't give it a fifth star is that I can't bear to shelve it with my other 5-star favorites--not the fault of the story or its writers, just my own literary preferences. ( )

I'm so into everything royal right now that I just couldn't pass this novel up. And of course, it turned out to be quite riveting for me.

The main heroine, Rebecca, sounded immature to me in the first half of the book, but later it grew up on me and I kind of liked her. Although I can't say the same about Lacey - the twin sister who was OK with Bex being overshadowed by Lacey and following her like her tail, but not OK with being in second place herself and who even took umbrage at her sister for that. And even though she's kind of rehabilitated by the end of the story, I can't like her after all the things she did.

I liked that the characters were similar to the actual royal family, although they were not exactly the same. And this story made me look at everything royal from the other perspective. What looks bright and happy and luxurious and fairytale-like, isn't always the same for people living that life. ( )