Majesty by Katharine McGee

After reading the fun, witty and addictive American Royals and the way it ended, I was sure I’d love the direction the next book would take the story and characters in. But I’m sorry to say that I struggled with Majesty this in ways that I hadn’t expected.

American Royals was a surprisingly feisty and entertaining soap opera and I was sure that Majesty would keep the highly enjoyable drama up. But where the drama in the first book was intriguing in a way similar to Gossip Girl, it was just over the top in this one. And where the romances were heartfelt and engaging in the first one, they were, with one exception, just illogical and unengaging in this book. The way, and how fast, the romantic feelings changed made them too shallow for me to really care for any of the relationships. I also felt like the characters changed from the first book. It’s hard to explain, but it was like they were all suddenly different persons somehow. I loved Nina in the first book, but here she was just so plain and all we got to know about her life was when she was swooning over a boy, which didn’t seem to fit her character from the first book at all. The same also goes for the way Beatrice kept focusing on her feelings for Teddy all the time, instead of the inner struggle between her desires and everyone’s expectations to always put America’s best before her own, that made her so relatable in the first book. And Jefferson, who I thought was kind of plain in the first book was now so plain that he was like a clean sheet of paper. Daphne on the other hand was even more of her horrible herself now, but sadly that only made me despise her so much that I had problems reading her chapters. I kept waiting for her evil behavior and scheming to come back to haunt her and for her to get a taste of her own medicine, but sadly the author (kind of) let her get away with it all, which felt quite upsetting.

What I really did enjoy though, was the character development that Beatrice and Sam went through though, and the way Beatrice wanted to form her role as a queen herself. I appreciated the discussions on gender inequality and sexism within monarchies and the way Beatrice wanted to prove to the world (and especially Lord Chamberlain) that a woman doesn’t need a man by her side to be able to rule. Some of my favorite parts of the book involved Beatrice telling the chamberlain off when he was a patronizing jerk. I also absolutely loved the new addition to the cast, Marshall. He was such a sweetheart and such a fun and relatable character that he made up for much of the other characters’ blandness. And the romance involving him was the one relationship I actually cared about in this book. Because of that, Majesty ended up being quite an okay read after all, but still very much a disappointment as to what I had hoped for.

Rating:
2.5 stars rounding up to 3

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​Author info:
Katharine McGee