Bookish Mumma

I contemplated not putting in chapter 11 of Red, White & Royal Blue because it was all emails and there wasn’t much I felt like I could quote there. If I did that, though, I’d have the finish the book today rather than tomorrow because there would be an uneven amount of chapters and it would annoy me. In the end, I decided to leave in what I chose to quote and go from there. Regardless, the entire chapter being emails isn’t a bad thing, it is hard to format in a way that makes it clear.

If you’d like to follow along or fill in the gaps, you can get the book here.

If you would like to read previous posts or content on previous books, you can find them here.

By the way, in this relationship, I am absolutely the Han and you are absolutely the Leia. Don’t try to argue because you’ll be wrong.

Well this depends on who has the high ground!

I can’t match you for prose, but what I can do is write you a list.

What do I keep saying? Every hopeless romantic sap needs an equally hopeless romantic nerd who writes lists. Since when have I always said this? Since now.

For half a second, he allows a small part of him to think about how much easier things would be if this were the truth: sliding back into comfortable, easy harmony with his best friend, leaving greasy fingerprints along her waistline outside Jumbo Slice, laughing at her crass jokes. If he could love her like people wanted him to, and she loved him, and there wasn’t any more to it than that.

Everyone hits a point of an aspect to their lives that they wish was different because it would make life easier. For some that is who they love or how they love. For others, that could be career moves or living circumstances. Regardless of the reason, everyone is worth being happy and feeling fulfilled with the life that they live. If we can’t eat the rich, we should at least tax them.

The anxiety feels like buzzing little wings in his ear in the silence, like a petulant wasp. It catches him when he tries to sleep and startles him awake, follows him on laps paced up and down the floors of the Residence. It’s getting harder to brush off the feeling he’s being watched.

Anxiety is a petulant little wasp that will tell it’s hive that you deserve worse when you’re already stressed. Medication helps to dull the feeling, but it never goes away, not really. That wasp is always close by, waiting to sting you when you want it the least.

“Okay, fine, kid,” Luna finally snaps, “you want me to be your fucking sherpa? Here’s my advice: Don’t tell anyone. Go find a nice girl and marry her. You’re luckier than me – you can do that, and it wouldn’t even be a lie.”
And what comes out of Alex’s mouth, comes so fast he has no chance to stop it, only divert it out of English at the last second in case it’s overheard: “Sería una mentira, porque no sería el.” It would be a lie because it wouldn’t be him.

There is no day and age where someone should have to hide who they love. Especially for the sensibilities of politics or religion. If you can respect what someone believes socially, theologically, spiritually, or any other way, you can respect who someone loves. The only exception is when it effectively causes harm to others. Let people love who they want to love and leave them the hell alone, it’s not your business.

“Alex, please. Please. Jesus Christ. You have to leave. I can’t know this. You can’t tell me this. You have to be more careful than this.”

Raf has a good point here and Alex has been unbelievably stupid. Alex’s mother pulled him off of the campaign trail because of the fear that his sexuality would come out. Now that Raf is aligning with the opposite side, he shouldn’t know that or he could use it. I also think there’s surveillance in his office given how aggressively cagey he is here.

“Fuck!” he says a third time, spiking the newspaper at the floor. That one was his. It feels obscene to see it there. “How the fuck did they get there?”

A consequence of being in the public eye is that others will always be trying to get this kind of information about you. It’s never okay, but it happens and it’s layered being being a ‘source’ for a supposed journalist. It’s okay to invade your privacy or hack into your private communications because of fame. I find that to be disgusting.

conclusion

I hate this turn of events for Alex and Henry. Reading it just reaffirms that I don’t want to be famous and I’m happy with my little corner of the internet. I don’t want people to invade my privacy like this and I question anyone whose goal is to be famous. I can understand wanting the attention, but those people generally don’t think about the consequences that that amount of attention gets. Unless you’re happy with living your life out in the open like that (which I don’t know of anyone who does), the ambition needs to be second guessed.

Obviously in the case of Red, White & Royal Blue, Alex and Henry don’t have a choice because of the circumstances of their birth and the ranks of their parents. No one deserves to be disrespected and demeaned like this. The next couple of chapters are going to be hard to read and see what happens after this leak.

If you’d like to follow along or fill in the gaps, you can get the book here.