Book #18: The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

This book is basically Will and Kate fanfiction, just a little bit twisted. American college student Bex Porter goes to Oxford for a year of college and while there, meets and falls in love with Prince Nicholas. The book goes through their relationship and how they fell in love and then the next eight years of ups and downs for them. It ends in dramatic fashion the night before their wedding, and shows a lot of the struggles of becoming a "royal" and dealing with the press and celebrity status.

It was a fun, totally not-high-brow-literature read. But the main problem was that it was too LONG, considering that it was supposed to be a fun, brainless book. It was almost 500 pages and really should have been edited down. It felt like a Sophie Kinsella book (which I loved as a teenager, and still do), with the rich British social scene and bar-hopping, but it took about five times longer to get through than Kinsella's books and it felt way too long. I think there could have been plenty of things edited down to make it more manageable. The other thing that I couldn't get past with this book was Bex's personality. She was a random American art student, the less-achieving of the twins (between her and her sister), but she absolutely never was at a loss for what to say or felt uncomfortable in any situation or came back with less than the most witty response. I have only ever met one person like that--as adept at conversation as that--and they weren't as self-assured as Bex was in her head (since we get this story from her perspective). I just felt like she wasn't really as believable as a character, or really that relatable to me, but that is because my life is eons away from hers. I was amazed by all the drinking and partying and sex that is in these pages--but I guess maybe that's how college and the early twenties are for lots of people (particularly in Britain?). (Because obviously that's NOT how my college experience was, haha.)

I did really like the story about how Bex and Nick fell in love--so normally, by just hanging out together--and then the details about her transformation after she and Nick got engaged. It seemed very real. I also liked the twist at the end with happens right before their wedding, and I was truly wondering how it was going to play out. I also liked how it was pretty realistic about how Bex's and Nick's relationship evolved and developed through their separations, etc. Overall, I liked the story, but I wish it had moved faster and cut out some of the lesser-important scenes and plotlines to focus on the main story.