The Quick Cut: A girl recently moved from Princess to Queen struggles with the complexities of her new role.
A Real Review: Thank you to Random House for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review. Royalty is intriguing to many of us due to the level of responsibility they hold, along with the lavish lifestyle they're born into. However, have you ever truly taken the time to understand what that is like? For Beatrice, that reality is far too real when her father the King does, leaving her the new ruler and Queen of America. Beatrice knew that her day as the ruler of America was coming, but in the wake of her father's death, that reality is impossible to ignore. The change in responsibility and schedule alone is grueling. However, America has never had a Queen ruler and getting the people on her side is no easy feat. Will her fast approaching wedding bring others to her side? Or will it only speed up her disaster? Two words perfectly describe this book for me: too much. For being three hundred plus pages long, the author tried too hard to make all the storylines she began in the first novel continue at a breakneck pace. It's unfortunate because the bones of this book make for so much possibility, but there isn't enough breathing room for them all to flourish. So they all flounder when instead these should've been broken up across multiple books. You have a litany of narrators, including Beatrice, Samantha, Nina, and Daphne. On top of their own narratives, each one has their own relationship to track: Beatrice and Teddy, Samantha and Mitchell, Nina and Ethan, & finally Daphne and Jefferson. You aren't given enough time with each couple to get satisfying character progression much less feel chemistry between them. A sequel filled with too much potential to satisfyingly serve all the storylines. My rating: 3 out of 5