Sam goes to see her father the next day, and he randomly starts talking about how he has his secretaries pull two letters out of the hundreds that civilians send every day for him to answer personally. He gives some high-faluten speech about being connected to the people and taking criticism with grace, because heaven forbid any royal in this book speak with anything but an after-school special tone about how great the monarchy is. Then we might have to *shockgasp* grapple with monarchs being a terrible institution.

“It was Red Fox James, for instance, whose efforts led to the establishment of the Native American dukedoms.”

Red Fox James was a real historical figure, a reverend, who advocated for having a Native American Day. Among a lot of other work with both Christen and Native (and Christian Native) organizations and societies. And also the Boy Scouts. Couldn’t find much else about him, except for claims that much of his background is sketchy and probably made up, but in general he seemed a good egg and didn’t abuse his fundraising skills.

Considering how thin on the ground information about this guy is, I’d bet that the author just looked ‘Native American heritage month’ and clicked around a bit to find a suitably old enough name to shove into the book. I’m just listing things about him here because, hey, why not learn something new today.

Her dad points out that Sam is in a good spot to critique (supportively) Bea and also all the other stuff she could do as a wealthy public figure, all of it painted in glowing and exclusively altruistic terms, of course. Because certainly no one would abuse their position of inherited wealth and influence and their position of being above the law for personal or devious ends. Nope. Not in the Washington family, those paragons of goodness.

Sam takes all of this like she’s never heard or considered it before and DOES THIS FAMILY SERIOUSLY NEVER TALK AT ALL? Then the king gives his 18 year old child a board seat on multi-million dollar trust.

Because. You know. Rich people.

Whatever, enough fawning over the powerful assholes, let’s see what’s up with our favorite social climbing asshole! IT’S DAPHNE TIME!

Daphne has been cyber-stalking Nina, looking for a chance to confront her without looking like a weird jealous ex. Has to run into her ‘naturally,’ of course. So when Nina goes shopping at Daphne’s favorite dress boutique, voila! Daphne high-tails it over there, all the way ascribing scheming motivations to Nina’s shopping choices. Because of course she assumes Nina has the same thought process as herself.

The staff tries to slyly keep her away from Nina, but of course our girl Daphne is having none of that.

Daphne is all sweetness and smiles, all “oh honey, I totally understand what you’re going through, I’ve been there, let me help you pick a dress” and is to all appearances kind and helpful. While also snooping through Nina’s phone while she’s trying on dresses. And then she hints in narration that something dastardly will happen to the dress Nina picked.

Then we switch to Nina and a week later, as she’s picking up her altered dress. Ooo, what did Daphne do to it? I really shouldn’t care, but catty tricks is the closest this book has come to anything happening and I’m starved.

Nina thinks about how the dress she bought was more than she’d spent on anything in her life, but also doesn’t seem chuffed about it, or really any kind of distressed. Because she’s not poor.

Alas, nothing fun happened with the dress. Daphne just called back later cancelling the order, and of course since it’s the day before the ball all of the good dresses are already claimed.

The store even refunded her full purchase price and Nina didn’t notice for a whole week because Nina isn’t poor. I will not stop harping on this fact for as long as the book keeps trying to pretend otherwise.

Nina decides to call on Sam for help, and her sudden need for socialite intervention makes her do a 180 on her relationship with Sam and go “oh, actually, she’s been really nice to me all these years. Duh.”

I hate Nina so much.

Actually I hate all of them, but Nina I actively hate, everyone else is just eye-role worthy.

Sanctimonious class tourist.

Sam is thrilled to have Nina show up randomly at the palace, and once hearing about the wardrobe emergency Sam pulls her into The Dress Closet. Which houses hundreds (thousands?) of formal dresses shared by the queen, Sam, and Bea.

They try on dresses and make up as friends. So that’s one more relationship mended with minimal effort. Let’s see, we’ve fixed Sam/Bea, Nina/Jeff, Sam/King, and now Sam/Nina. Practically all that’s left are Conner and Teddy. You know, the ones this book actually cares about which is why everything else got wrapped up by the participants just going “oh, duh, I was being silly.”