Sam is still at the party and moping about Teddy. The other boy in this story with no personality. Why does anyone want to date these cardboard cut outs? At least Daphne’s “in it for the power” motive makes sense.

Sam makes a valiant effort to flirt with other boys and distract herself from her star-crossed love, Teddy, the man she’s had like three conversations with. Then Bea shows up to drop the bombshell that she’s going to dump Ted. And then overtly suggests that she’s on team Sam/Teddy. Because WAH, WAH, LOOOOOOOOOVE.

Which is all well and good and stuff, I mean this is set in modern day and it’s fine to make a love match with whoever you want. But that hasn’t been the book so far and so much effort has been put into trying to justify duty over love. To have her do a “whoops, never mind” 180 without addressing all of the other points is so cheap. It’s like the book assumes the audience is on Team Love, puts forth all the arguments against it, but also assumes that no one in the audience was convinced so it doesn’t need any justification to revert to Team Love again? So this whole book isn’t a push and pull between two sides, it’s pure one side having all of the arguments and the other side….just, there. I’m sure it’s a safe bet that most of the audience doesn’t need to be convinced that Love Conquers All, but that’s exactly why it’s a lazy, cheap choice. You’re presuming the safe allegiance and putting no effort into it.

They spend too many words hashing over things we already know, and then Sam decides she wants to be the one to tell Teddy. She coerces him into a coat room for a private chat because, you know, of course.

Sam breaks the news that he’s about to be dumped, and he takes it well, all “yeah, I thought she liked someone else, it’s okay because I like someone else, too.” Then they make out. Teddy is still not interesting through all of this.

BUT LET’S SEE WHAT DAPHNE’S DOING.

Later at the end of the party, she finds Jeff drinking alone in a side room and gets all chummy. After getting him good and drunk and then sending him up to bed, with some hints of them getting back together, Daphne leaves. She runs into Ethan and they share a ~*~*~fancy~*~*~ taxi away from the palace.

On the ride Daphne tells him everything she did to Nina, and he’s all impressed. Even though ‘everything she did’ is…uh, tattle to the news, cancel a dress, and yell at her in the bathroom. I’ve been enjoying Daphne’s attitude in all her chapters don’t get me wrong. But the result of all that hasn’t exactly been impressive. It’s been a lot of feelings without the actions to match.

And then they make out, because they actually like each other, unlike Daphne with Jeff just wanting to ‘win.’ Ethan is also a thin character, but at least he’s got a little more of a dynamic going on since he’s in opposition to Daphne. That friction shows that they’re independent people with separate goals, unlike Teddy and Jeff who just serve as foils going along with whatever the plot needs. The fact that they were established before the book started also helps, because it’s a lot easier to hand-wave the ‘why’s when you’re not telling the part of the story that includes the ‘why’s. Or, at least, should include.

So. Uh. Yeah, this is my ship. Insomuch as I have one in this book, lol.

Back over to Bea, who tracks down Teddy as the night winds down. She apologizes to him for breaking things off, and true to form Teddy has no angst or cares or seemingly even an opinion. He’s just all smiles and affability and god if he doesn’t turn out to be like a spy or something then what even is the point?

After saying goodbye to everyone, she gets her dad in his office so she can break the news and just blurts it out to him. Which is probably the best option.

In the course of the conversation, she also admits she’s in love with Connor, and her dad flat out says no. They bring up some law, but I don’t remember that being a thing before?

That law is two centuries old. Maybe it’s time we had a commoner on the throne!

Uh, two centuries ago your family was commoners, and every single year you ennoble a whole slew of new people. Just make Teddy and Earl or something? This line really, really doesn’t work for an American monarchy story.

The king refuses to entertain any fixes to whatever law they’re talking about. He claims that Connor would be a hindrance to her, and spends a lot of time talking about how hard it’s going to be for her to fight the patriarchy as the first ruling queen. Literally the only kind of bigotry this book will acknowledge is “internet haters being judgey to girls.”

The king also admits that he was once in love with a commoner, but he didn’t marry her and married the current queen instead, and it all worked out. Feelings are transient and he loves his wife now and life is more or less dandy.

Which, uh, isn’t an unreasonable thing to say? She’s very young. They’ve known each other less than a year. There really is no way to tell if she’ll still have feelings for him down the line. At the very least, they don’t need to be talking about this like her only choices are ‘marry Connor’ or ‘marry Teddy.’ She can just openly date Connor and see how their feelings deal with the impending media storm.

But anyway, instead Bea says “fuck it, I’ll let the law take my titles and Sam can be the queen instead.”

And her dad replies by promptly having a heart attack.

Sheesh, what a drama king.

The next chapters are Daphne, Sam, and Nina adding nothing to our understanding of their characters or the plot. Daphne and Ethan had sex, but she’s still gonna chase the prince. The news has 24/7 coverage of the king’s heart attack. All the principle characters are at the hospital recounting the ‘plot’ of the book to us so far and being sad.

“This is all happening too fast,” he said quietly. “Everything is changing and I don’t know how to stop it. I just want it to go back to the way it was.”

Um…it kind of has? Jeff is dating Daphne, Nina is sad and on the outside, Beatrice is still the next queen and silently pining for her guard. Sam…is just sort of there. The whole book has felt like an extended introduction to these characters for the sake of something maybe happening in Book 2. But even in that case I’m sure the only ‘happening’ would be a shuffle of the ships that actually sticks to the end.

We do get a flashback to what happened to Himari. She found out about Daphne/Ethan, threatened to tell Jeff. So Daphne put sleeping pills in her drink to make her seem drunk, the better to play off any accusations Himari might make. Only instead of rambling for a bit and passing out, Himari tried to climb the stairs and fell off them, hence the coma.

However…this is coming to us at the very end of the book but it isn’t payoff for anything. Sure, maybe the exact story is new information, but no situation or relationship is being chanced by this revelation. It’s just details being added. Pointless details after which we carry on exactly as before, because we already knew Daphne felt guilty and that whatever happened Ethan was in on it.

Anyway, in the very last chapter the king dies and Beatrice is the queen now.

Aren’t you just so thrilled about that?