Nina is hanging out with her friends on campus when OH NO! A tabloid article drops revealing her as the prince’s new girlfriend. And it does so in painfully unflattering terms, which is about on par for a trashy tabloid at least.

Nina goes on a bit about how she’s suddenly the most hated girl in America, which seems a bit rich since it’s one article and it’s only been out for like an hour. Nina heads home and there’s a crowd of aggressive paparazzi in front of the house, and I can’t help but feel like Nina’s angst should come after this. Like, she knew it would happen and she’s scared when the article drops, sure, fine. I get that. It’s not like it’s hard to guess how the media is going to treat a normal person. But anticipate the hate before, and then angst about the hate after. It’s not that hard.

The king’s chamberlain is at her house waiting for her, along with her moms. He’s pretty dickish in his attitude, but he’s there to basically say “okay, here’s the rules for dating royalty openly. We don’t actually care what hanky panky you kids get up to, but we care about appearances, so we’ll go through the motions of enforcing no sleepovers. Also, take some security measures and maybe update the wardrobe a little bit.” He also gives her an NDA to sign, which Nina says she’s never been asked to sign before despite being a friend of the royal family for most of her life. Which…seems odd? She specifically points out that other friends of the twins have had to sign them, but not her? Is the book trying to play off like NDAs are a sign of moral failing?

Although, she’s only recently 18, maybe her parents signed them before and just didn’t tell her.

After Lord Snooty leaves, Nina commiserates with her moms about how online commenters are SO MEAN and does she really want to keep dating the prince if there’s going to be all this fallout?

Which. Again. It’s been AN HOUR since the news broke. There’s been a handful of nasty commenters.

I get that this is going to be bad for her, I really do, but we’re living in a Meghan Markle world know exactly what ‘bad’ means and a few mean comments for an hour makes Nina seem extremely fucking petty. But this book can’t manage to do anything without resorting to shorthand, and actually showing the wider society and also consequences over time is haaaaard so meh just skip straight to the angst, I guess.

The next day, Bea decides to propose to Teddy. She hates it, but hey, he’s her best option so far and her dad is dying, so into the breach she does. It’s a very stilted and formal conversation, at least held in private between the two of them.

If he said yes, if they went through with this, it would be for life. As her grandmother always said, divorce was something only the European royals did.

Oh my god. What? I mean…what? Which fucking topsy-turvy land are we in?

What even is the point of having an American monarchy if we can’t be the young, hip royal family that’s ahead of the curve because we were only born yesterday?

And also, did this book just try and cop a line from Ever After? “Divorce is only something they do in England,” was a great, biting line in that movie and here it’s just nonsense.

Teddy accepts the proposal just as formally as she offered it, and they kiss also formally. Bea makes sad faces because she compares it to kissing Conner.

Later that night Bea is all SUPER DUPER ANGSTIFIED because WAH I CAN’T MARRY MY PRECIOUS CONNER BABY and he’s not coming to her room for their nightly naked Only Kissing, so she goes up to his room instead.

She’s all in a tizzy and declares she wants to have sex with him, but Conner declines because she’s very obviously upset and he doesn’t want her making rash decisions while emotionally compromised. I really wish I could give him brownie points but part of me thinks it’s just this book’s aversion to sex again. Instead, Bea breaks down sobbing on him and spills the beans about her dad’s illness. There is much sobbing and schmoopy and angsty from Bea about how at least she’ll be able to remember Connor being in love with her later down the line when she’s trapped in a loveless political marriage.

Guh, I’m so bored of this, I seriously can’t tell you one single thing about Bea other than her angst and it’s kind of distressing. She’s about to be a m-fing queen regnant and we know zero things about her morals, policies, personality, nadda. Although I guess if we knew anything about her policies, this book would have to tackle America’s batshit policies and we can’t have that when we’re too busy declaring that a royal family could never do any wrong.

Sam has some new angst, being worried about Nina and her refusal to answer texts. She’s not upset about Nina/Jeff, just wants to protect them both. Sam has the most personality out of any of these characters, and she’s still a little thin and lacking in motivation.

Except for pining after Teddy, of course, and oh hark look who just showed up! Teddy, still shell shocked from getting engaged.

Teddy breaks the news that he’s engaged to her sister now, and Sam gets into a rage about how dare he, as if the two of them had anything going. She tries to make him feel bad by pointing out how he’ll be playing second-fiddle to Bea and not have any power of his own (which? I mean? Only by her definition of ‘no power.’) But then she brings it back again to the Teddy/Sam lack-of-a-romance.

Clearly she thinks there is a romance, but come on, they’ve had like two kisses and one conversation, they are even thinner than Teddy/Bea and at least T/B has the excuse of being more of an alliance than a romance.

Also, Teddy clearly doesn’t want to do this but feels like he has to because ‘you don’t say no to the queen.’ Which…does not bode well for how the monarchy is viewed in this world, if a fucking duke is in quivering fear of the monarch. Or at least, so he claims to be.

Sorry, Teddy is so poorly characterized that he just automatically comes off as evil to me. He’s got nothing to him except whatever would perfectly foil the main characters, so it seems like he’s keeping secrets and being manipulative. Which he might be, wouldn’t put it past this book to pull a Frozen, but also he might have nothing there and just be a shit character.

Sam barges into Bea’s room and cries “how could you do this to me!?!?!?! But I like Teddy” to which Bea basically shrugs and goes “you’re 18, it’s a crush, get over yourself, also, I am lost in a sea of misery.” Sam finds Bea’s moping to be a poor outlet for her childish tantrum, so she flounces out of the room again.