Playing the Palace

"Playing the Palace" by Paul Rudnick had a lot of potential but couldn't quite bring it together for me. I wouldn't say it's bad, but it's not good either.

There were a lot of good scenes and lines, and the secondary characters were a lot of fun. Meet cute to insta-love to whirlwind royal romance. Fun, right?

Unfortunately, the pacing and composition really threw the whole thing off for me. There's a lot of jumping forward in time and then recapping what you missed. The guys also keep expressing themselves through insightful speeches that feel really unnatural and jarring in this setting. It felt a lot like they would have an issue and then immediately resolve it with a long monologue, or worse, occasionally monologue and then have the issue, so I was left questioning why it was an issue.

Overall, I don't regret reading it, but I don't think I'll be actively recommending it to anyone.