Red, White & Royal Blue fans, this might interest you
London on My Mind (or it’s original title, Romance Real) by Clara Alves is a sapphic romance with a princess of England love interest.
Originally written in Portuguese, the English translation comes out June 4th, of this year.
Fun fact, I actually started this book around a year ago. Do I know Portuguese? nope but that wasn’t going to stop me. I translated paragraph by paragraph with google translate. I stopped not because the book was bad (it was very good and I was so intrigued) but because it was just too much effort.
What is it about? Dayana, who’s from Rio, always wanted to visit London. Why, you might ask, well, she’s a huge One Direction fan, but more importantly, her beloved mother loved England. She named her after an English princess, her favorite movie was Notting Hill, etc. Every chapter opens with a one direction lyric. This might seem tacky to some, but as someone who had a one direction phase, count me in. She’s seventeen, plus-size, and black. After her mother dies, she is forced to move to London, and there she must live with her estranged father and his new family. She hasn’t yet forgave her father for walking out on her mother and her and she doesn’t really get along with her father’s new family, London’s rainy weather is bleak and, well, she can’t even see one direction live because they broke up many years ago (she knew this already, of course, but it still hurts).
Until one day, on a walk, she finds a certain princess sneaking out of Buckingham Palace who accidentally throws her to the floor, so of course, she helped her escape from the guards following her.
Our princess, Diana (yeah they share a name, just spelled differently), has movie!Bea’s red hair and book!Bea’s personality.
Is she a burglar? Why is she sneaking out? What is happening? Who even is the royal family? And who really is Diana?
If I had to compare this book to other books, I would say that this book is between Red, White & Royal Blue and Her Royal Highness.
Like this
*deeper oops
It’s been long I read Her Royal Highness but it’s the same, sapphic royal romance, I didn’t really enjoy it, it was too simple.
About romance real, well I haven’t finished it but
I have the feeling than it won’t be so “forbidden romance” like rwrb is, since a member of the royal family here is already out as gay, so another won’t really cause such a fuss. The queen is not homophobic, and her name is Diana. Both of our main characters were named after her. Yeah she’s lady Di. Lady Di is the queen. Good for her.
Little character sheet
