5 Reasons You’ll Love American Royals by Katharine McGee

You know what’s a mess? America.

Which is why I’m super fond of alternate reality versions of it in books. BLESS American Royals for entertaining the notion of George Washington having accepted a crown and thus starting a long line of kings (and now an upcoming queen!) to rule America under a monarchy.🙌🏻😌

I really liked the premise of this book so I was super excited to dive into my ARC (thank you Penguin AUS) although I was late to start it…because life ate me. It’s still eating me, mostly my leg, but I’m mangling along despite it. Anyway.

I wanted to do a bit of a different review today. I’m going to do a “if you like THIS, then you’ll like American Royals!” and list some different tropes and things in it! The best part of book recommendations is figuring out if a book has collected all the sorts of things you personally love. Someone just has to whisper, “snarky princess” and like, I am tHERE.

1. Modern Royal family drama!

I only just realised that I kind of do love this. 👀 I’ve read plenty of YA books starring famous families (celebrities or president’s kids or some such) and the pressures etc, but it puts a whole new level of high stakes on it when the family is ROYAL. Also when the kids are disasters.

We have Bea (the next and FIRST queen of America) who is 21. And then the twins, Samantha and Jeffery, who are 18 and just finished their gap year and are supposed to start taking up royal duties…except they’re total trouble.

2. Multiple narrators

If you’ve read The Thousandth Floor, you’ll know Katharine McGee loooooves having a stack of narrators to weave in and amongst each other as their lives tangle. We have four in this one: Bea, Sam, Nina and Daphne. They all had such different roles to play, some resentful, some claustrophobic, some ambitious. I kind of didn’t care about Daphne’s? She wasn’t villainous enough to love-to-hate her, so she just came off drippy. Sam was 100% my FAVOURITE. She has fire and passion and is a collection of bad decisions waiting to happen.

3. Sibling love and strife

I kind of am trash for sibling books and won’t even deny. Sam and Jeff (prince and princess twins) are close, but Jeff is kind of oblivious to how social media swoons over him and judges Sam for everything. So tension there. And then Bea is just so so far removed from Sam’s life (Sam is the spare, Bea is the most important person here). Their dynamics are full of misunderstandings and tension, but with some surprising develoments…

4. ALL the romance tropes!

We have (1) Forbidden Romance with Bea making heart eyes at her bodyguard, (2) Catastrophe Romance, with Sam accidentally making heart eyes at one of Bea’s forced suitors, and (3) Friends-To-Lovers with Jeff chasing Nina, the treasurer’s daughter, who isn’t sure she wants the fame and drama of being in love with a prince. And then at the side there’s (4) Daphne chasing the prince and social climbing, but she keeps getting tangled up with his BFF, the hot and suave Ethan, who sees right through her schemes.

5. Some society critiques amongst the glitzy drama

Look, it is a soap-opera/drama type, with all the beautiful balls and dresses and scheming and whispers and prettily disguised backstabbing. But it also put forth some harder thoughts: like what it’s like to live life under a spotlight. The harassment faced. How it feels to be judged, to be the brunt of rumours. The PRESSURES, and how it cracks you. I really liked how it addressed how the media hounds women very very differently to how it praises men.

It’s an alternate reality, but ooooOOOoo does it say things that are super accurate for today.

What if America had a royal family?
When America won the Revolutionary War, its people offered General George Washington a crown. Two and a half centuries later, the House of Washington still sits on the throne.
As Princess Beatrice gets closer to becoming America’s first queen regnant, the duty she has embraced her entire life suddenly feels stifling. Nobody cares about the spare except when she’s breaking the rules, so Princess Samantha doesn’t care much about anything, either . . . except the one boy who is distinctly off-limits to her. And then there’s Samantha’s twin, Prince Jefferson. If he’d been born a generation earlier, he would have stood first in line for the throne, but the new laws of succession make him third. Most of America adores their devastatingly handsome prince . . . but two very different girls are vying to capture his heart.

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| what about you? | 

does this tick off anything on your “need to read” list?! do you like alternate reality books?? should America have a queen? 😂