Writer: cheesebiscut8

Genre: LGBT+ royal romance

Parts I read: 14 parts

Beginning thoughts

This gave me Red, White and Royal Blue vibes, even though I never read it. I know your work is inspired by something else, but I just thought to mention it.

Blurb

I liked the first part of the blurb, though I do think it might need to be loosely rewritten because writing the ages the way you did messed with the flow but also reads confusing until after a few reads.

The second part of the blurb is not too bad as it mentions the characters and the setting and the overall tone of the book, but it doesn't give me any pull to read it. Are there any stakes? Any issues along the way? Any conflict that could pull their relationship a part? There is just no reason for me to want to read the story, especially when you answer the question in the blurb.

Story

I do love the potential this story has. A royal prince forced into galas to find a woman to marry then falling in love with the choir boy while also dealing with the death of his brother? Yes please.

I do find that the love between Tanner and Bailey happens pretty quick as the blurb implied, they were gonna have more conversations before the loving. The fast-paced nature of the book doesn't help with this either. I think maybe drag out the conversations between the two to give the reader more of a connection between the two.

I will say the first flashback scene did come suddenly and had to take a minute to realise it was actually a flashback or a dream, though its placement in the story was kind of off in my opinion.

Writing

I didn't find many spelling issues or issues that stand out while reading, but I do have some things that I have found in your writing:

- Telley writing (this one being the worst offender as almost everything is told to us)

- Lack of commas

- Occasional long-winded paragraphs and dialogue of different people talking in the same paragraph

- You have one person speak then another person making an action in the same paragraph

- You have different perspectives yet at times the writing is going into the other's perspective

- fast-paced writing

Going to put this writing, but using food or drink descriptors for people of colour is generally not okay and seen as problematic as it is seen as fetishising people of colour. I recommend looking into writingwithcolor on tumblr as they do give out great advice for this.

Characters

Bailey is probably the better character. He has some internal conflict, has some backstory and just like his POV overall. I wish I can see more of his interests and show more of his conflict instead of everything be told to us.

Tanner is an okay character, but I know literally nothing about him. He is good at singing, and he was about to evicted from his home for nonpayment of rent and he has a family who is overseas. But other than that, his personality only really comes to thinking about the prince and adoring the world around him (which is fine, but we need more). Did he work? Did he have any friends he left behind? He is Latino with also not any culture is shown in the story

The dynamics between Bailey and Tanner is odd since he is the literal prince and Tanner is giggling and being sneaky with not saying his name? Just weird is all.

Bailey's friend is ok too but besides her being wealthy and having loads of connections and the friend of his, we know nothing about her too.

Setting

There is little description in your story especially when we get to the castle, however, I think it would be better to show more of Tanner's world before he gets to the castle to show the contrast of both worlds. Maybe giving a couple of chapters dedicating to Tanner's life as a low middle class young man would be alright.

Other than that, the setting is pretty barebones with some description but nothing that holds my interest.

Overall

It's a good book with so much potential.

Best regards,

Nobody <3