This book starts out in a way that is very Ella Enchanted. There is an introduction that you can hear being read in a faux british person’s voice describing how *obvious* you knew how after the revolution George Washington became king, and jumps in from there.
The story revolves around the three princlings.The big (only?) focus of them is basically love and dating. For real, it’s all they talk about.
The world building is interesting. Imagining a world where america set up a similar system to the UK with duchys and dukes and all that is interesting. At the same time, McGee tries to paint this as a more progressive world than if we had presidents. Slavery only lasted 2 monarchs, one of the characters has gay married mothers, etc. But then these progressive moments are also interspersed with things like, the native american Dukes. Why couldn’t they retain their traditional titlege of Chief etc. Or how kings act in their people’s best interest, the noblese oblige, despite that being mostly ahistorical. There are some obvious jabs thrown in, like how electing a king would be terrible and lead to the wrong people seeking the position.
There is a certain amount of whiplash too, where the book paints all of america as this royal obsessed country which is the opposite of what we know. It’s an interesting twist on celebrity worship in our times.
The pacing of the book is wild. Primary story moments are given a paragraph before continuing on. Banal moments get pages of text.
The characters in the story have a very TV-esque plot armor. They don’t talk about things when it’s convenient, and will forever just brood over things.
Overall, this book felt like an American Bridgerton, or tried to be. Pleasant read if you can get by the monarchy.