Prince of the Palisades ate up a plot I've experienced before

 

Hello, welcome to this. And the this in question? A post where I will be rambling about Prince of the Palisades by Julian Winters for, probably, between 1,000 – 1,500 words. So, you’re welcome. Let’s just hope I actually make sense with what I’ll be saying.

The blurb says that when roguish Prince Jadon of Iles de la Rêverie is left in America to clean up his image after a horribly public breakup gone viral, romance is not on the table. Carefully planned photo ops with puppies? Yes. Scheduled appearances with the Santa Monica elite? Absolutely. Rendezvous with a pink-haired, film-obsessed hottie from the private school where he’s currently enrolled? Uhh… Together with his entourage – a bitingly witty royal guard, Rêverie’s future queen (and Jadon’s older sister), and a quirky royal liaison – Jadon’s on a mission to turn things around and show his parents, and his country, that he’s more than just a royal screw up. If he doesn’t prove that he’s the prince Rêverie deserves? Well, he may not be allowed home. But falling for a not-so-royal American boy has Jadon redefining what it means to be a leader. If he can be someone’s Prince Charming just by being himself, maybe that’s all it takes to win over a nation. Or, at least, a prince can dream…

This definitely isn’t a concept that I think is new or groundbreaking. A young royal being sent to a private school to try and rehabilitate is image I think is literally the plot of Young Royals, the Swedish show. But I’ll be honest, I’m one of those people that literally doesn’t care if a plot line is similar or the same, so long as everything around it is stylised enough and individual enough. I’ve said it in posts before, like I don’t mind how many times a trope, or a plot, gets done, so long as it’s done well.

Anyway, the book opens on this trashy tabloid article from a publication called The Dish and Chips about how Jadon was out partying in LA, underage drinking and, allegedly, doing drugs, that he says in the first chapter were Pez. You also see his royal snobbery from the outset too. He mentions how his dad has banned him from coming home until he proves he’s worthy, and that the seven-bedroom, ten-bathroom, place that he’s staying in “will have to do”. But basically, he’s got to make himself look good in the time he’s in California that all culminates in attending the Sunset Ball – California’s answer to the Met Gala. And also, that boys are out of the equation for him, because his last breakup was about a month ago. He meets his guide, Morgan, who introduces her friends, Grace and Nathan. And then the boy from the front cover, Mr Pink Hair, Reiss, turns up photographing. Jadon ends up at this welcome party thrown for him, and in his first actual interaction with Reiss, he thinks Reiss is filming him, so ends up being a bit of a dick.

A little thing that I found cute in this book was Julian Winters naming characters after other authors, because reading them felt like finding an easter egg. At one point, I don’t remember what they did, but there were characters called Adam and Becky, for Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli. In Willow Wood, the school Jadon goes to, there was a Mr June, for Jason June, and a Dr Garza Villa, for Jonny Garza Villa. I’m sure that there were others in there, but I just won’t have known them, because I don’t know every author. But I just thought it was a funny little detail because when making these notes, literally maybe a few hours ago I saw a TikTok of a teacher using their friends’ names for worksheets.

There’s also this point where Reiss is meant to be shown in the light of how his life is so violently different to that of Prince Jadon’s, and the way that this is done is by showing us how Reiss shares a bathroom with his little brother, Dom, and how that’s apparently the worst thing in the world that he doesn’t have his own bathroom when he lives with his parents. And that blew my mind as a concept. So, I’m from the UK, still live here, have never lived anywhere else, and to me, not having your own bathroom is normal. Like, the only times I’ve ever had my own bathroom is when I lived on my own during university. And even then, that was only my first and last years. It was just so funny to me that not having your own bathroom was presented as something that only the poor, common, non-royal folk do.

Anyway, to actually talk about a character now, Reiss is painted as the school outcast, and now that I’m putting these thoughts down on the page, it was giving very Jughead Jones in Riverdale vibes. Very, “I’m a weirdo,” vibes. And then this other girl, Grace, that’s one of the popular people at Willow Wood, she sort of adopts Jadon into her friend group, and we find out that she’s very particular with who she lets into her inner circle and on page 130, Reiss admits to Jadon he’s making a short film for this festival to help in get into university. Jadon jokes that it’s about him after Reiss mentions that he’s superstitious and doesn’t want to show him, and that immediately gave me the vibes that perhaps that could lead to some kind of conflict that perhaps it was actually going to be about him, and that maybe something would have leaked from it and tarnished Jadon’s reputation. However, then from that, I thought that maybe by the end of the book, Jadon would get to see the short film, and that the whole time it was something to show the real Jadon, as part of Jadon’s whole arc was that he was frustrated with the monarchy (tea) basically controlling his life.

I’m not going to say whether that’s actually the plot of this book as by the time this post comes out, the book will still be relatively new, and I don’t want to spoil it, but I do always appreciate it when a book lets me come up with my own kind of conclusion as to what the plot may end up being, regardless of whether I end up correct or not. I do think that I’m actively trying to think less about what I’m reading, and just to try my best to enjoy what I’m reading for what it is, and that definitely has helped me enjoy books a little bit more than what I have been.

I did also appreciate that this book, to talk about plot for a little bit, didn’t follow the same lines that other royal media has in the past. And by that I mean the plot line of it being a romance where the two leads get together and then the conflict comes from the fact that the royal is in love with a non-royal and then Big Media becomes the problem between them and the non-royal is like, “No, I’m not good enough for you”, only for the royal to run after them and be like, “No, you are!” While this book did follow a royal, it never felt like the book was about the royals or the monarchy, it was still just a book about a boy, and I think that’s what I loved about it the most.

Okay, bye.