I know the times are hard and troubling and we bookworms are trying to escape the pressure of the real world. And so I am here help you do that with a great recommendation. Let us review Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, shall we?
Characters: Alex Claremont-Diaz and his sister June, Nora Holleran (Alex’s best friend), Prince Henry George Edward James Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor, his sister Bea and Pez (Henry’s best friend)
The sons of the first families of The USA and the UK hate each other dislike each other and the world knows it. The first families and their PRs decide to intervene and stage a fake Instagram relationship.
What starts as a fake friendship between Alex Claremont-Diaz and Prince Henry blossoms into something more. But is coming out as gay worth all the drama in the royal family? And more importantly is their love worth causing a political derailment around the world? You will have to read Red, White & Royal Blue to know more.
My initial thoughts
Red, White & Royal Blue was highly addictive and hilarious that you cannot put it down once you start. The banter between the leads is witty and adorable. The writing is top notch and Casey McQuiston knows to keep the readers hooked until the end.
Above all, what struck close to me was the lead characters and how much life like they both were. And the sub plots and side characters especially June, Bea and Nora, were as deep as they can be. Oh I loved them all.
Things that worked for me
The writing is fast paced and quite an easy flow.
I loved the characters and seriously appreciate how deep their arcs were.
The witty banter and the chemistry between the leads is adorable.
An extra brownie point for the very diverse cast.
Things that didn’t work for me
Red, White & Royal Blue is not going to be your gateway to learn every bit of the politics of USA. You get what you see!
Bottom-line
Red, White & Royal Blue is such a cute, sweet and funny LGBTQA romance that will definitely keep your lock down sorrows go away. You need this in your life!
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Let us chat
Have you read this hyped up book? How did you like it? What are you reading to keep you distracted from the reality? Let us talk.
I know it has been a while since we had an author speaking to us about the craft of writing and we have Beatrice who will talk to us about a topic that is very relevant today – writing diverse characters and poverty as a diversity factor.
I will let Beatrice talk now!
Say hello to Beatrice!
Beatrice De Soprontu began writing at the age of four, when she scribbled on the walls with a crayon. Now an adult, she mostly scribbles on her home computer surrounded by her noisy children and their less noisy father.
Born and raised in New York City, (which includes: Queens, Bronx, Brooklyn, maybe even Staten Island – a.k.a. the real New York and not the tourist trap that is Manhattan), she enthusiastically travels the world on a budget whenever she gets the chance.
You can find her book Vices/Virtues on Amazon or B&N
Let’s get on with it shall we?
One of the greatest tenants of fiction writing is that a strong character needs to overcome major adversity. In modern literature these hurdles can stem from identity markers such as race and sexual orientation, or they can be of a more fantastic nature such as aliens or monsters. Oddly however, being impoverished is rarely depicted as a problem.
Roughly a third of the world live in poverty and that’s not just in the “third-world”. In the arguably wealthy United States, roughly 40 million people are impoverished. That’s a lot of poor people. All of them differ in their backgrounds, beliefs and lifestyles, yet they face a common foe: grinding day-to-day poverty. Their stories are important and should spur us as writers to represent them in our tales.
Hence, for authors who wish to incorporate the struggles of being destitute into their fictional works here are 5 easy suggestions.
Separate poverty from race
In many fictional works race and/or ethnicity are linked to poverty, especially “urban” poverty. It’s understandable given that disproportionate numbers of minorities are poor. However, the problem is that this merging of class and race easily leads to stereotypes.
When poor characters live in rural areas, they become hillbillies, when they reside in urban areas we get a scene from “Boyz in the Hood”. Please just don’t.
Separate poverty from crime
Newsflash: lots of rich and even middle-class folks commit crimes. While poorer areas might be affected by higher crime rates, illegal activities don’t have to define the characters’ lives.
Remember the very admirable Evans family from “Good Times”? The episode titled the “Debutante Ball” is all about how the older son J.J. tries to date a young woman whose family feels his is not good enough for her. Their opinion isn’t based on anything he’s done, but solely on the fact that he lives in the “ghetto”.
Voila! A plot that tackles urban poverty minus the gangbangers!
Poverty is relative
A person might not even realize how poor they are. Curious but true, if everyone around you lives a life just like yours, you probably won’t know life could be different. Especially when you are young, it’s easy to imagine those wealthy people you read about or see on television are fictional. (I’m a grown woman, yet I still find it hard to wrap my head around the flying airplane suites of “Crazy Rich Asians”.)
Likewise, you might have quite a number of conveniences (clean water, free schools, tv, cell phones, microwavable pizza, really fancy sneakers, etc.) and still consider yourself to be quite poor, leading to the next point…
Poverty can damage a person psychologically
The impact of poverty in a character’s life doesn’t have to be confined to the tangible here and now. Psychologists have written extensively on how prolonged impoverishment results in long lasting detrimental effects.
Increased stress and internalized shame are just some of the possible legacies. It’s juicy stuff for an author, real psychological foes that need to be vanquished. Why not mine the possibility?
Characters are more than identity tags
We are all more than our identity markers. Never trap a character in a label. Your poor character is more than that, he or she also has feelings about religion, sexuality, and ethnicity. This person may be irked by the incorrect positioning of toilet paper. (What’s best rolling over or under?)
Write to all of it. Don’t feel you have to explain every decision they make. Fictional characters, like all people, are mysterious creatures and that complexity is part of their beauty.
Final words
Make your characters diverse. Make them interesting. Make them struggle. It’s easier than you think. Just rob them. Take away all their cash. You’ll find that when resources are scarce, your characters become richer.
Thank you, Beatrice
And I am back to thank her for taking time off her busy schedule to write us a guest post. You can follow and contact her through these links.
I jumped at the chance to buddy read Five feet apart by Rachael Lippincott, because it is not something that has ended up quite well for me historically and I would not pick it up on my own even though it was on my TBR. Go figure!
It has been a while since I read a young adult based in a hospital romance (or sick-lit, if I may). Yes it is supposedly a trope by itself, if you had not known earlier.
Stella Grant is a high schooler who is at the final stages of Cystic fibrosis (CF), a genetic disorder that mainly affects the lung. She has been a regular at the hospital for most of her life. She loves lists and being in control is the only way she knows to cope up with her health.
While she has a great support system and friends circle in and around the hospital, she has to avoid putting herself at the risk of infections she would be eligible for lung transplant.
Will Newman is a new CF patient to the hospital and all he wants is to get away from it. He has spent most of his life between clinical trials and staying at various hospitals and is now waiting to turn eighteen so that he can get away from all these restrictions and enjoy life as it should be.
When they both stumble upon each other, they know they should stay away from each other. But what if they maintained a five feet distance between each other? Would that be so bad forms the rest of Five feet apart.
Book review of Five feet apart
Due to my earlier disappointments with the romances with sick teens, I was skeptical when I started reading Five feet apart and I was mildly surprised that I enjoyed it as much. Though I have a few misgivings about the plot, the easy writing and witty dialogues kept me going.
I wish books would stop portraying that kids who are suffering some physical ailments do not get to enjoy anything in life and they need to break free of their treatments / medical restrictions to get to be “normal”.
I liked reading about the CF which is a new thing for me, and the story was cutesy as YAs tend to be and am totally looking forward to watching the movie Five feet apart starring Cole Sprouse now.
Things that worked for me
Five feet apart plays exactly into the trope of sick lit and does a good job with it.
I enjoyed the easy writing style and the witty banter between the characters.
Things that didn’t work for me
I didn’t feel related to the characters but it is just me. It did not hinder my reading.
As I mentioned earlier, I personally had issues with the trope that encourages patients to break free of the treatment.
Bottom-line
Five feet apart is a typical sick lit that does its job in opening up talks about the CF with a positive ending. I would recommend it for all John Green (of course) and Nicoola Yoon fans.
Does it ever annoy you when you expect something from a book because it was marketed so but then it turns out entirely different? I picked Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams because it had great reviews and it said it was ‘Bridget Jones meets Americanah’. But it turned out to be something different. Let us find out how Queenie was for me, shall we?
Queenie is a 25 year old Jamaican British woman, a typical millennial living in the pricey London and working for a newspaper. She has a close friend’s circle and a long term Caucasian boyfriend. Her family consists of overbearing grandparents, a religious maternal aunt and an estranged mother – you know the typical Jamaican family.
Things spiral down fast when her boyfriend proposes a long break from their relationship. Her performance at work suffers and finally she gets fired. Her social life derails when she starts hooking up with men who have no time or interest in her personality.
How Queenie deals with it and gets out of the mess that is her life now with the help of her family and friends forms the rest of the story.
My initial thoughts
Queenie is a tale of a young woman who tries to find her identity between the two cultures. It is less of a love story but more about strong female characters and their friendship and family ties. The characters are flawed but they are relatable and their problems are real. Though set in the UK, their story is from everywhere.
I agree that the Jamaican culture took little back seat among the other themes but from what was described I found it was similar to the Asians. Especially the importance given to family and religious sentiment. I loved how Queenie spoke about the stigma around the mental health and that is something really close to my heart. If only more people get off that mentality soon.
Also when I picked Queenie looking for a cheesy love story but instead found an intense book that spoke about several themes like sexism, feminism, sexual harassment at work and fetishising of Black women’s body. Though they were touched lightly, I am glad Queenie opened the topic at the least.
Things that worked for me
I loved the flawed characters and the pains were real.
Queenie talks about the importance of female friendship that sees through every up and down of her life.
It opens up the topic about the stigma around mental health and taking steps to improve it.
Things that didn’t work for me
I wish Queenie had spoken more about the racial and other issues.
I was totally misled by the genre classification and the summary.
Bottom-line
If you loved dry British humor like Chewing Gum (Netflix) or Fleabag, you will love Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams. It totally surprised me and I think it is one of my best reads of 2019, as of now.
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Let us chat
Have you read Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams? Do you get irked by the misleading marketing? What was the last book that surprised or shocked you by such issues? Let us talk.
The Upside of Unrequited tells a tale that the readers of YA have read several times. It definitely talks about first love and teenage angst. But what makes this novel by Becky Albertalli such a hit both among young and new adults? Read my review to know more.
Seventeen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso has never had a kiss and has about 26 crushes that she has never made the move upon. She is shy, awkward and conscious about her body. Her fraternal twin Cassie, her best friend, is just the opposite.
Things change when Cassie falls in love with Mina. Molly is forced to get out of her aloofness and make new friends. Mina’s best friend Will takes a liking to her and he is about to become Molly’s 27th love interest when she meets Reid, her nerdy co-worker.
With Cassie moving further apart from her, Molly is forced to handle having the attention of two guys alone. To top it, her parents are finally tying their knots with the legalization of gay marriages in the USA and she has more on her plate than ever.
Will Molly and her awkward self, be able to pull this off? Will Will become her 27th unrequited love (did you see what I did there?) or is it someone else? You will have to read the book to know more.
Book review of The Upside of Unrequited
The Upside of Unrequited deals with several themes that are relevant in today’s world – peer pressure, body image, teenage love, and rejection.
I loved the writing. The style of the author is definitely quirky and cheerful that kept me hooked until the end.
One thing that The Upside of Unrequited has been continually praised for is the diverse representation of minorities, interracial and LGBTQ couples and families. The characters are diverse, of course, well thought out but still are too perfect to be relatable, except maybe for Molly.
Molly’s flawed, funny, socially inept characterization would be relatable to everyone who has had that phase. I like how family and sisterhood was important to her.
I would have loved Molly except that for the fact she had one goal in her life – finding and kissing her boyfriend. And all of a sudden she gains her self-worth when she finds herself a guy. Erm.. definitely something we don’t want books to reinforce of the kids today.
Bottom line
Despite the predictability in the plot, as one might find in most of YA romances, Becky Albertalli’s writing wins the book for me, I could not put the book down even for a minute before I could finish it.
Have you read The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli? Did you enjoy the diverse characters or you had the problems that I did? Which is your favorite Becky Albertalli book? Let us talk.
