Great Beach Reads...

“A Person is always the hero in their own story, and thus an unreliable narrator. She’s hardly going to put pen to paper to write about what an embarrassing ninny she’s been”, Queen Eleanor, The Heir Affair

“I’ll never forget,” she whispered.  And then, so subtly that I almost missed it: “But I’ll never forgive, either”, The Duchess of Clarence witnessing the words of the Queen. 

The Heir Affair

Hey 1000 Bookies!!  This week I am going to be discussing a novel I just finished while on vacation, The Heir Affair by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan.  This story is the sequel to The Royal We which was published in 2015.  The original story and this sequel revolve around the romantic life of Prince Nicholas, heir of the British Royal Family and Rebecca Porter, the American student in Britain whom Nicholas falls in love.  The story was inspired by the romance of Prince William and Kate Middleton.  Each book is over 450 pages long, but both are an easy and fast read.  I enjoyed both books and strongly recommend if you enjoy books around royalty. These novels are perfect for a vacation read, whether sitting on the beach, by the lake, or at the pool. 

Personally. I have always had a fascination with royalty, especially the British royalty.  Descended from poor (but hardworking) Irish immigrants on one side and entrepreneurial Italians on the other, neither was especially enamored with royalty.  However, I was always intrigued by royalty growing up.  Growing up in the metropolitan Philadelphia area, our brush with royalty came in the form of Grace Kelly.  Princess Grace’s family were descended from Irish immigrants living in Philadelphia and she went on to become the wife of the ruler of Monaco.  Her son, Prince Albert, was frequently seen Philadelphia.  When I was a teenager, I remember spying the commemorative plates that my great-grandmother had in her china cabinet marking the visit of King George IV and Queen Elizabeth in 1939.  The family she and my great grandfather worked for attended the state dinner at the White House and gave them to her, as Nana and Pop-Pop were born subjects of the English Monarchy.  Although Nana Burke was an Irish patriot before she was a British subject. 

As I grew older, I was always fascinated with the Royal Families of Europe, specifically how the dynastical relationships led to the outbreak of World War 1.  I read the book, Nicholas and Alexandria and learned that that most of the royal houses of Europe were related to Queen Victoria and that she spread hemophilia throughout the continent.   

The Royal Family in The Royal We & The Heir Affair are based on the House of Windsor.  In the books, the family name is Lyon.  Interesting, the Queen Mother, Elizabeth’s family name was Lyon.  Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was the daughter of a Scottish Lord when she married Albert later King George VI.  Her father was Lord Glamis (so was Macbeth).  The monarch in the story is Queen Eleanor who plays a larger role in the sequel.  Prince Richard is the Prince of Wales, who has two sons—Nicholas and Frederick.  His wife is mentally ill and off stage for much of the stories.   

Rebecca Porter, from Iowa shows up at Oxford where she meets Nick Lyons who is better known as Prince Nicholas.  

Rebecca is from a moderately wealthy upper middle-class family; her father invented the kegerator—an easy chair with a frig in the bottom for your beer.  Nick and Bex become good friends and She is accepted into his group of friends and begins dating Nick’s good friend, Clive.  Eventually Nick falls for Bex and the first book chronicles the on again/off again romance.  However, Clive does not like being shut away and has a trick or two up his sleeve.  Bex also becomes close with Prince Freddie, Nick’s younger brother.  At one point, Bex kisses Freddie, who has fallen in love with her.  Eventually she is back with Nick and engaged when Clive exposes the kiss (thanks to Bex’s twin sister Lacey) and Prince Freddie’s love to Rebecca in an attempt to blackmail the happy couple. 

The Heir Affair picks up after the wedding of Prince Nicholas and Rebecca.  Clive exposes the secret to the press during the wedding ceremony and the public explodes against Bex.  Nick and Bex run away and for a few weeks live in disguise as Margo and Steve, running a used book shop in Scotland because you know why the hell not.  The Air BNB allows people to rent the apartment above a bookstore, but you must run the bookstore, which Bex loves.  I must say, I would LOVE to run the used bookstore for a couple of weeks.  I love used bookstores and frequent them every chance I get.  Bex has this great quote, which struck me as quite romantic—

I like that used books brought with them their own history—every dog-ear, every stain, every crease.  Maybe a book was slightly faded because someone had left it in the sun on their honeymoon.  Maybe page ninety-eight was turned at the corner because it contained a glorious insult, or the perfect romantic turn of phrase.  Maybe the person who’d highlighted nearly every line had graduated at the top of her class. Secondhand books could have lived in tiny walk-ups or hotel rooms or the White House—or, here, even in Balmoral Castle itself.  Each book was a mystery, its secrets hidden in plain sight.

The Royal family has disliked Rebecca since she arrived on the scene.  However, in The Heir Affair, they have bigger problems.  The Queen’s health in precarious, Nicholas can’t seem to get the picture of Freddie and Bex kissing out of his mind, and the only thing Bex must do is pop out an heir and redecorate their palace.  The Queen gives Nicholas and Rebecca her deceased sister’s palace.  There is a mystery surrounding Princess Georgina (patterned after Princess Margaret) and Rebecca is going to find out what the family is hiding.    

Of the two, The Heir Affair has more twists and turns than the original story.  The ending will kind of shock you, I did not see it coming and I am pretty good at guessing these endings.  The story does deal with more grown up issues.  One of those issues is infertility.  Nicholas and Rebecca have reproductive challenges.  That story line hit home with me as my wife and I had those challenges also.  My wife’s first pregnancy ended in a tubal a week before Christmas, Rebecca’s first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.  Then comes the challenge of getting pregnant, the story chronicles all the steps, ups and downs.  Infertility sure sweeps the mystery of romance away.  The story captures the emotions.  There is a moment that I really identified with specifically when Rebecca is very jealous of her sister who has a baby boy.  I remember when my wife and I could not even look at other people pregnant or with babies without that tug on our hearts.    

We were lucky to have a healthy baby girl after the tubal pregnancy, but from that point my wife had a series of miscarriages then could not get pregnant.  The story discusses the ins and outs of IVF and I could sympathize with them.  We did two rounds of IVF, the first did not take but after the second my wife became pregnant with our beautiful twin daughters and we received our happy ending.  I remember being at my sister’s wedding giving my wife her first shot in the bathroom. 

The Royal We and The Heir Affair are fun stories, they include Royal Weddings, funerals and Royal births.  Do Nicholas and Bex provide a royal heir to the family? You will have to read the stories…

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