American Royals
What if America had a royal family?
When America won the Revolutionary War, its people offered General George Washington a crown. Two and a half centuries later, the House of Washington still sits on the throne.
As Princess Beatrice gets closer to becoming America's first queen regnant, the duty she has embraced her entire life suddenly feels stifling. Nobody cares about the spare except when she's breaking the rules, so Princess Samantha doesn't care much about anything, either . . . except the one boy who is distinctly off-limits to her. And then there's Samantha's twin, Prince Jefferson. If he'd been born a generation earlier, he would have stood first in line for the throne, but the new laws of succession make him third. Most of America adores their devastatingly handsome prince . . . but two very different girls are vying to capture his heart.
My take: This was definitely a guilty pleasure read. I am extremely happy Washington did not accept the offer of being a king... but the little girl in me, who loves the history of the British royal family, really got into the story. There are a fraction of readers who have a big problem with the plot of this book because of America's shameful history of the way it treated Native Americans and our terrible history with slavery. They thought this book somehow made light of it only for the sheer fact of it being written at all. I get that, I really do. However, I read this in the spirit it was written, as an alternate reality. Therefore, I checked my common sense at page 1 and really enjoyed the characters. I did find a lot of similarities between the tv show The Royals (an alternate reality look at the British royal family) and this book and those bugged me a bit, but otherwise I liked the character development and I am excited to read the direction the author will take them in the next book.