BY SOPHIA
Oh boy, guys. If you listened to our last podcast episode, then you’ll know that I have been struggling to finish The Heir Affair by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan. Both Jensine and I felt like the start of the book was slow and while Jensine is smart and has no qualms about ditching a mediocre book partway through, I happen to be a glutton for punishment and MUST finish any book I start before I can read another one.
I pride myself on being a pretty fast reader … like, put a GOOD book in my hands and depending on how long it is, I could probably finish it in a sitting or two. I read the last installment of the Harry Potter series in ONE DAY. So it says a lot when I tell you that it took me about a month to read The Heir Affair.
Care to find out what I liked (not a lot) and disliked (a lot) about the book? Then read on but be forewarned … SPOILERS COMING SPOILERS COMING SPOILERS COMING!
Overall Rating: 2/5
What I liked:
- As with the first book, I love that it it’s loosely based on the royal family and you can pretend/imagine that these scenarios might have happened in some alternate version of history
- The storyline with the queen’s sister (Georgia) ended up being really sweet towards the end
- Bex’s pregnancy, while predictable, had an unexpected twist with the IVF plot line/using Frederick’s sperm as a donor so it felt fresh and new
What I disliked:
- There was such a long gap between this book and its predecessor that I found the storyline for The Heir Affair to be extremely confusing – I couldn’t remember anything about the first book! It’s obvious from the start of this book that there is some scandal the main characters are trying to recover from but … what scandal? WHAT HAPPENED? A quick Google search and plot summary pulled from the Internet did help to fill in the main storylines from the first book but there were still so many small details missing from my memory that it made the reading experience of this book choppy and not as enjoyable
- For the same reason as above, I found the Freddie/Bex friendship in this story to be so perplexing. Ok, I understand that Freddie might be harboring a crush on his sister-in-law but why does this seem to be a thing that (a) Freddie can’t seem to let go of and (b) why is Bex being such an idiot and insisting that she still wants Freddie’s friendship in her life? As someone who is married, I found that entire dynamic to be so odd …
- The story was broken into so many different parts (literally, Part One, Part Two, Part Three, etc) that it felt like the authors were trying to cram five different stories into one book. There was the Bex/Nick storyline and how their marriage is faring; there was the Georgie/eccentric great aunt storyline; there was the Bex/pregnancy storyline; there was the Freddie/Bex storyline … it was so muddled, I think the story would have been better served if the authors chose to just focus on one or two main story plots instead of serving up a random smorgasbord of competing focuses.
IN CONCLUSION:
- If you really feel compelled to read The Heir Affair, I’d highly recommend reading The Royal We not only first, but RIGHT before reading this book. If you don’t read the two back to back, you’ll find The Heir Affair to be confusing.
- But unless you’re an Anglophile, I think this is a book you can safely pass on – there are so many better reads you could start instead!