My daughter and I listened to this delightful, charming, happy, romance novel about the son of the US President falling in love with a British Prince. Yes, many of the twists and turns were predictable and inevitable. But like any good romantic comedy, that doesn't detract and may even enhance--I found myself holding back tears at least twice. It is really fun and escapist to picturing their relationship: the glamor of it, the intensely personal nature (the Prince is closeted and the President's son does not even realize he is bisexual), the ways in which they reflect on their own places in history and its effect on bigger things than them, and their family dynamics. At the same time, there is something "everyman" about these two characters who are about as lofty and removed from everyman status as one could possibly imagine.

I subtracted a star not for the predictable romance but for the clumsiness of the way the book handles politics and its almost absurd fantasy of an alternative America with a woman who was divorced from a Mexican immigrant winning the Presidency in 2016. Too many of the Democrats are all good, the Republicans cartoonish villains, and some of what happens on the campaigns is absurdly unrealistic. (The relationship has that characteristic too, they use email instead of Signal, Telegram or even WhatsApp???) This was only a small fraction of the book but it was much of the last eighth of the book and so it probably takes on additional weight in my review.

Also, just in case you were considering listening with your thirteen your old child, it has a few very explicit sex scenes. They're not gratuitous because they play an important role in the development of the characters and their relationship, especially as they explore new things about themselves and each other. But we did fast forward through all of them.