This series is completely bonkers. I’m not sure why I’m still reading. Maybe it’s just to see what ridiculous drama Katharine McGee will come up with next.
This book primarily revolves around the League of Kings, which is apparently a giant conference that takes place every few years in which most of the monarchs of the world and their heirs get together to discuss world events and what they can do about them. You’d think climate change would be at the top of the list, but for no reason whatsoever, no one except Beatrice wants to talk about climate change, despite the fact that, in the real world, almost everyone except American conservatives are doing something about climate change. But since this series has never had any bearing on the real world, now is hardly the time to start nitpicking.
America is hosting this year’s League of Kings, which means Beatrice is hosting. They chose to host it at a palace the Washington’s own on an island, although I can’t remember where the island was supposed to be. I just remember the only way to get there is either by ferry (or yacht) or helicopter.
So, of course Beatrice is under a lot of pressure, since this is still her first year as queen, and as if that weren’t bad enough, she has to host this huge conference.
While the conference part of the conference is as boring as any other conference, Beatrice eventually figures out that the real work of the conference is done outside of the conference rooms — on the beach, by the pool, on yachts, at the poker table, etc.
Beatrice also strikes up a friendship with Princess Louise of France, who is her father’s heir and regent while he’s ill. Beatrice is in awe of Louise because she thinks Louise is very cool, so she’s honored to be included in Louise’s group of friends, but I never trusted Louise. Something about the supposedly instant friendship she struck up with Beatrice just didn’t ring true.
Sure enough, Louise betrays Beatrice when it comes time to vote for the climate accord. She makes up for it and they manage to sort-of repair their friendship, but Beatrice figures out they have to be friends as equals, rather than Beatrice following Louise around like a puppy dog.
Meanwhile, Teddy feels aimless because there’s not much for the king consort to do (except he’s not even king consort because they both bailed on their wedding, although they still went on their honeymoon), but he’s still expected to abdicate from the line of succession of his duchy. So he’s bored and resentful of the fact that Beatrice feels like she has to rule alone. He tries to claim that it’s about wanting to help Beatrice with the burden of ruling, rather than power, but it’s still such a tired trope that I’m really sick of seeing, especially having seen it in the PBS show about Queen Victoria and The Crown. Women have always been expected to wait at home while the men go off to work, but the second the roles are reversed men get all pissy and the women are supposed to realize that they have to prioritize their relationship over their job.
That said, I would normally argue that there’s a time and a place to prioritize your relationship over your job, I just wish we saw more storylines where men have to learn that lesson. And when your job is running a country and trying to save the world from looming climate disasters, your job is objectively more important and should absolutely take priority your personal relationships and your fiancé needs to just deal with that.
But if Teddy were to quietly find something to do with his time using any of the limitless resources at his disposal, there wouldn’t be drama, and McGee can’t have that.
Meanwhile, Sam is still dating her duke, Marshall, and things are starting to get serious between them. Sam even goes to California to meet his family, but the reception she gets from Marshall’s grandfather, the current duke, is frosty at best. Sam accidentally overhears a conversation between Marshall and his family in which Marshall says his relationship with Sam isn’t serious and his grandfather says something along the lines of, “I thought you two would have broken up by now.”
Turns out they’re less than thrilled that their black duke is dating a white princess, especially since not everyone wanted California to join the U.S. in the first place, so there’s that layered on top of the racial issue.
Sam is heartbroken to hear Marshall say their relationship isn’t serious because she had been falling in love with him and had assumed he felt the same. When she confronts Marshall about it later, he admits he does love her, but that their relationship can’t go anywhere because he can’t abdicate his dukedom to be with her, so they break up.
But they’re too in love to be broken up for long, so they get back together, even though they’re not sure how their relationship will end.
Fortunately, Sam has a few heart-to-heart conversations with an aunt of hers who tells her about a member of the royal family who left his position as a member of the royal family, moved to Hawai’i, and lived happily ever after. In McGee’s version, instead of America colonizing Hawai’i, it politely asked Hawai’i if it wanted to join the U.S., and Hawai’i declined, so it is still ruled by its own queen, who, by the way, has also refused membership in the League of Kings.
Anyhoo, through her conversations with her aunt, Sam realizes there’s no reason for Marshall to quit his dukedom when she can quit her position in the royal family. She might be next in line for the throne now, but eventually Beatrice will get married and have kids and Sam will be so far down the line of succession as to make her position irrelevant. So why not get ahead of things by quitting her position now and running off with the love of her life?
She and Marshall decide to run off to Hawai’i together, suggesting they’re both abdicating their positions.
While all this has been going on, Nina has been falling in love with Jeff again, because of course she has. One minute he’s the love of her life, then he’s just a childhood crush, then he’s back to being the love of her life because I don’t think McGee knows what else to do with Nina other than spin her in circles.
What I did love about this book is that Nina and Daphne actually become friends. Gabriella Madison is a descendant of James Madison, making her family one of the richest and most powerful families in America, and Gabriella has no intention of using her power for good. She’s spoiled, selfish, and mean, and has set her sights on Jefferson, so she’s making Daphne’s life hell in as many ways as she can, and Daphne falls for it. When Daphne could just go, “I’m dating Jefferson and you’re not, so suck it,” she instead stoops to Gabriella’s level by seeing what dirt she can dig up on her to get her to back off. But she has to sacrifice time with Jeff in order to go after Gabriella, which is a huge mistake. She took her eyes off the prize to indulge in a cat fight, which surprised me, because she’s normally too smart for that.
Then again, she might have been subconsciously sabotaging herself. Even before Gabriella came along, Daphne had found it more and more difficult to maintain the façade she had created to get Jefferson to go out with her, and cracks of her true self keep showing through.
Then Gabriella comes along and messes with Nina’s financial aid because Nina insulted her at a party. Gabriella also gets an investigation going into Daphne’s dad as to whether he should be stripped of his title. That’s when Daphne goes after Gabriella, even though her mom had specifically told her to lie low and keep her eyes on the prize. Since Gabriella is much more powerful than Daphne, Daphne’s plan to blackmail her into dropping the investigation into her father backfires. Her family loses their title, but Jefferson steps in behind the scenes and has Nina’s financial aid reinstated so she can stay in school.
Instead, Daphne decides to team up with Nina, figuring the enemy of her enemy is her friend … at least for now. Hence their team-up leads to an unexpected real friendship and I loved it because it was so unexpected, but also believable. I was impressed at how McGee was able to make a character I had once hated so much into someone I felt sorry for.
Nina is just as surprised to find herself caring for Daphne, which makes the whole situation with Jeff that much harder when they fall for each other again. Again, they kiss, and Daphne sees them, and puts the pieces together that Nina was the one who was kissing Jeff the last time she walked in on him kissing another girl. As with last time, Daphne doesn’t tell anyone she saw them because she knows screaming and crying won’t make Jeff stay with her.
When Nina asks what Jeff is doing and he says, “things have been weird with Daphne lately,” Nina points out how unfair it is for him to ping pong between her and Daphne, so he promises he’ll go break up with Daphne.
But of course Daphne has other ideas. She and Jefferson had finally slept together in this book, so when he tells her she hasn’t been herself lately, she hints that it’s because she might be pregnant and she’s scared. She chooses her wording very carefully, saying only that she’s “late,” and letting Jeff fill in the blanks, so she can have plausible deniability later. Sure enough, Jefferson ends up staying with her.
Towards the end of the League of Kings conference, Teddy flies off to get away from Beatrice for stupid reasons and Beatrice, for equally stupid reasons, decides she has to go after him and tries to make it to the airport before his plane takes off. They get in a car crash and the book ends with her in critical condition in the hospital, Teddy by her side, and Jeff (who had been made regent while she was hosting the League of Kings) reluctantly taking the oath as king so he can rule while she’s in the hospital. If Sam is next in line for the throne, it would have made more sense for her to be made regent, but since this series has never bothered to make sense, there’s no reason for it to start now.
Daphne is now just a heartbeat away from becoming queen, which is more than even she had hoped for. And when Nina sees Daphne comforting Jeff at the hospital, Daphne shoots Nina a look that tells Nina that, not only has Jeff not broken up with Daphne, but that Daphne somehow knows about the kiss.
So apparently there’s going to be more to this series, and for some reason I can’t explain, I can’t stop reading, so I will be eagerly awaiting the next installment.