So... Her Royal Highness is definitely a book...

 

So, today I’m talking about Her Royal Highness by Rachel Hawkins. I got this book from a little indie bookshop somewhat near me. I’ll say, this was a book that I bought when I made the decision that I wanted to actively read more WLW books. I ended up picking this up, no lie, because it was the first one that I physically picked up in the shop and after I read the blurb, I figured it sounded nice and predictable – nothing too taxing on the old brain box.

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Still, the blurb says that Millie Quint is devastated when her sort-of-best-friend/sort-of-girlfriend has been kissing someone else. Heartbroken and ready for a change of pace, Millie decides to apply for a scholarship to a boarding school in the Scottish Highlands. Homegirl gets in, and her roommate is Flora, an actual Princess of Scotland. And the last paragraph of the blurb is basically saying, “It’s dislike to lovers”, but in way more words than that. So, you know what? Tropes-wise? Slay. I’m a fan of the disliking each other to lovers, and I wasn’t about to complain on that front. I assumed they were going to end up together – even though Flora was a princess. Also, apparently this came out in 2019, so I won’t feel bad if I spoil anything. Although, I’ll put a warning if I do spoil anything.

Within the first few pages, we find out Millie is from Texas, so it’s immediately giving me the same vibes as Playing the Palace that I read a couple months ago – American pauper, British royal. We also find out that Millie is pretty much the smartest person in her school and loves geology. One thing I will say is, the blurb made the book seem like she applies to the school once she sees her best friend, Jude, kissing someone else, but in the first chapter, she’s apparently been talking about the school, and already has an acceptance letter for it, so the ordering isn’t right there. I think the blurb could have done with some re-wording, so it actually reflected the contents of the book. Did it affect my experience with the book? Not really. It was just a brief “…this isn’t right” moment. Still, by the end of the first three chapters, Millie sees Jude kissing her (Jude’s) ex-boyfriend, so Millie is like, “Lol guess I’ll go to Scotland after all.”

So, immediately, this book was very “How do you do, fellow kids?” On page 26, I had to read the word “#goals”. And yes, the book had the hashtag in it. This whole book definitely the vibe where it seemed like the author didn’t know how teenagers spoke. There was another bit where Millie, unironically, says “like a boss”. Flora says “goals” at one point as well. It felt very much like millennial humour at certain points, as well. 

There’re several allusions to the fact that Millie is quite an outdoorsy kind of person. She’s camping out with Jude in the first chapter, her dad suggests that she and him go camping, and when talking about the Scottish school, Gregorstoun, it apparently has this thing called “The Challenge”, which is basically this big outdoor challenge thing that the students go off and do in teams, and if that wasn’t set-up for the fact that Millie and Flora were going to end up on a team, I don’t know what else would be. And also, the final sentence of the chapter before she ends up in Scotland is her saying that the chances of her meeting royalty there are like zero. The whole book gave me very cliché fanfiction-y vibes. But I do want to mention how that isn’t necessarily a bad thing in my eyes.

On the other hand, however, it does get a bit trope heavy at certain points. Like, opposites attract. Flora is obviously a princess, and Millie couldn’t be less like other girls. Come to mention, to say that Millie likes geology, that comes in blobs. Like it doesn’t get mentioned for ages, but then gets slathered on thick in certain points. And all of that about how she always went camping with her dad, when it came to The Challenge, those skills were just not present, like at all. I think I would have also liked to know more about Millie – Flora, too, to be honest. Like, what sort of music to they like? Foods? Things like that. The things that make them them. It was very much that I wanted to be shown the kinds of people they were, instead of being told.

But in terms of predictability, since Flora is Millie’s roommate, she ends up as Millie’s partner in “The Challenge”, because the people at the school have allegedly decided to make things “more immersive”. And this is also in the sort of time when we’re really introduced to Flora. I won’t lie, she comes off as a massive bitch, and a bit of a brat as well. But given the type of book this is, I assumed that we were going to find out that she has some flaw or something that would humanise her and make us like her. That sort of happened. But this links to my point at the end of the paragraph above, I would have liked Flora more had I known more about her as a person. While I did want more about Millie, I think Flora needed the expansion more, because now that I think about it, I can’t remember a single thing about Flora, outside of the being a princess.

About the third of the way in Flora gets into trouble, and Queen Clara casually shows up to the school, which I actually kind of liked, because even though her stint at this point was brief, she was there as a mother, not the queen. And the punishment she threatens is very, a mother threatening to take away her little kid’s toy. Which honestly, I wasn’t mad at, because I feel like when I’ve read books with these sorts of set-ups in the past, we rarely get to see the royalty high-ups as actual people.

Now, there were these bits, usually at the ends of chapters, when there would be these extracts from gossip magazines and forums. I liked them, especially since the story does partially focus on a royal – someone always in the spotlight, whether they want to be or not. And I’ve read a few other books that have had similar concepts – characters in the spotlight – and there’s always been mention of the press, social media, things like that. So, it was nice to actually see some of the examples of what was happening, instead of just being told it was happening. However, I’m not sure how much it actually ended up meaning, within the book. Like, it was something that was there, but the characters didn’t seem to be affected by it, even when it was present for the story.

The big conflict comes towards the end of the book, and I’m going to mention spoilers here. But the conflict is basically that someone tells Millie that Flora actually broke up with her ex, when Millie thought that Flora was the one that got dumped. Millie then spirals about how things, realistically, won’t work out between them. And that train of thought, fair enough, I get that. But to me, it felt like it came out of nowhere. Because even during her crush on Flora, and when she’s spending time with Flora, there aren’t really any thoughts like that beforehand. Another part of their conflict is how Flora casually mentions that Millie is no longer on scholarship, because she (Flora) paid for Millie’s tuition without telling her. Millie gets, understandably, mad, saying that she earned the scholarship. So I think part of the issue is that Millie doesn’t come from money, so just throwing money at problems to make them go away doesn’t really sit well with her. But my issue with that was that, other than one moment where Millie says she doesn’t want Flora buying her a plane ticket, so she could go home for Thanksgiving (because it’s “too much”), is that the whole Millie not really having money just gets seemingly forgotten about for so much of the book. Spoilers end here.

And that encapsulates my main issue with the book: So much of it just felt half baked. There were good ideas there, I just don’t think they were expanded on as much as they should have been. To give it an analogy, I think all the necessary pieces were there, they just weren’t glued together (or, honestly, developed) properly.

So, will I be re-reading this? No. And I hate to say it, but it’s going onto the pile of books to give away.

Okay, bye!