Quick Pick: The Royal We, by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

• Opening lines: (Prologue)
  I don't know what to do.
  
  The calls and texts are starting to pile up, relentless and suffocating. I'm afraid of what will happen if I don't give him what he wants, and I'm afraid of what will happen if I do. The TV isn't soothing my nerves, given that global hysteria over my impending wedding is the lead story on every channel. 
• Reason I picked up the book: I had heard a lot about this book, and I started reading it on my tablet on Southwest's site (yay for free books while in the air!) during my recent L.A. trip - only the first 7 chapters were provided, and after those I was already hooked. 
• And what's this book about?
American Rebecca Porter was never one for fairy tales. Her twin sister, Lacey, has always been the romantic who fantasized about glamour and royalty, fame and fortune. Yet it's Bex who seeks adventure at Oxford and finds herself living down the hall from Prince Nicholas, Great Britain's future king. And when Bex can't resist falling for Nick, the person behind the prince, it propels her into a world she did not expect to inhabit, under a spotlight she is not prepared to face.

Dating Nick immerses Bex in ritzy society, dazzling ski trips, and dinners at Kensington Palace with him and his charming, troublesome brother, Freddie. But the relationship also comes with unimaginable baggage: hysterical tabloids, Nick's sparkling and far more suitable ex-girlfriends, and a royal family whose private life is much thornier and more tragic than anyone on the outside knows. The pressures are almost too much to bear, as Bex struggles to reconcile the man she loves with the monarch he's fated to become.

Which is how she gets into trouble.

Now, on the eve of the wedding of the century, Bex is faced with whether everything she's sacrificed for love-her career, her home, her family, maybe even herself-will have been for nothing.
• Favorite Paragraph: ... I was increasingly nervous. Intellectually, I knew I wasn't being introduced to the extended family as anything more than Nick's friend, and that Cilla and even Bea being there would bolster that cover. But I wasn't the kind of moneyed or titled aristocrat with a plummy accent and a Bentley that Nick's relations were used to; I was a first-time skier whose father made comfortable appliances for beer lovers. I didn't know how any of that would go over with them, no matter what they thought he and I were to each other - and on that score, Richard was still in severe, sometimes apoplectic denial.
  
  Gaz studied me, then raised his glass. "No need to panic," he said. "We'll keep you out of the blast radius."
  
  As we clinked wine glasses, mine cracked and squirted thick red port all over my couch.
  
  "Don't tell Cilla about that," Gaz warned. "She'll say it's an omen."
  
  "I don't believe in omens," I said.
• Recommended for: Anyone who loves anything having to do with the Royals, like I do. Andrea on Goodreads write "This is definitely Kate Middleton fan fiction, and I have no problem with that," which pretty much sums up my thoughts on it too.
• Something to know: The authors of this book are also the authors of the blog Go Fug Yourself, which follows celebs and royals. 
• What I would have changed: Not much, but I wanted to know more about what happens to Nick and Bex after the book ends! (presumably they live "happily ever after" but perhaps a sequel is in order??)
• Overall rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.
• Where can I find this book? Click here to purchase - and you can still read the first 7 chapters for free on Amazon! (click here)