royalty belongs to the gays 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️ exactlyyyyyyy

In this book we’re following Rose (the princess of a small country) and Danni (an immigrant who got accepted into the prestigious boarding school Rose attends). There, Rose and Danni strike a friendship and (shocker) fall for each other.



I’ll start by saying I really enjoyed the characters! Sophie Gonzales is great at creating characters, so I’m not surprised I really enjoyed both MCs’ POVs.

Danni was a fish out of water, being in a new country, a new school, and a completely different type of environment (she’d never attended a boarding school + being surrounded by millionaire VIPs is a lot lol). She accommodated pretty quickly, though. Additionally, Danni was also dealing with her stage fright, and, later in the story

when she gets outed

she falls back on the whole ~people are mocking and being fake-nice to me~ mentality, since she’d been bullied at her previous school. Through it all, Danni managed to be pretty mature for her age, which I enjoyed.

Rose is very self-assured, witty and sarcastic, and I really liked following her. She’s still dealing with some pretty heavy stuff, though, particularly the fact that she’s expected to stay in the closet forever, marry a man and birth children, which she (a lesbian) obviously doesn’t want. However, the most compelling conflict in Rose’s life, in my opinion, has to do with her relationship with her ex-friend Molly. We can see early on that Rose is very clearly suppressing her feelings so she doesn’t have to deal with the grief and trauma she went through, which dampens her friendship with Molly.

I reeeeally liked slowly uncovering what went on between them that made Molly start disliking Rose, and I thought the whole thing was SO WELL DONE!!! 👏🏻

Molly being hurt because Rose acted like she didn’t care at all about what happened and just brushed it off whenever Molly even tried to bring it up, so Molly couldn’t even count on her best friend for comfort made so much sense. And Rose, on the other hand, brushing it all off because she was shutting down and suppressing her feelings, not necessarily because she didn’t *care*, which was also so understandable.

And I really liked that they talked through everything that happened and explained their feelings. I just really liked this conflict and its resolution. Probably my favourite aspect of this whole book!

And I overall REALLY liked Molly! She was so interesting and mature, and I absolutely LOVE that she was an integral part of the story, and was important for both Danni and Rose. One of the best uses of side characters I’ve seen! I enjoyed the other SCs as well! Eleanor was a nice supporting character, and I appreciate that she was friends with both MCs; Alfie was also an interesting character, and I liked that he had thought-out justifications for his actions (even if they were flawed). I do wish we’d seen more of Danni’s mum and her bestie from her country, though.

Overall, the characters were really well-written. They were well-rounded and three-dimensional, and I liked their inter- and intra-personal arcs.



Now for the ✨ romance ✨. Rose is a very sarcastic character and she starts lowkey messing with Danni from the get go. I was afraid this would feel very one-sided, but, fortunately, Danni is also quite witty, and teases Rose right back. I’m really glad they were on the same level when it came to this type of banter! It made them feel very much like equals, which is exactly what I want when we have sarcastic characters like Rose. When I started reeeeally liking their back-and-forths was when they became friends, though! Their text messages were so fun!! Loved their banter! 🤭🤭🤭

I will say that I wish their romance had been a bit more of a slow-burn, though. I just didn’t fully *feel* their romance, tbh. I still liked them, but I wanted to LOVE them, and I didn’t. ☹️☹️☹️ I really liked the crush confession, but I didn’t care about their 1st kiss. I enjoyed their moments together, but I thought their “I love you”s came too soon. The realest moment of the book for me was when Molly said “Your life is bigger than Danni, and hers is bigger than you.”, because, YEAH, it just kinda felt like they were all in for each other (they literally thought about how they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together lol), but since *I* didn’t feel it, it just felt a bit to sudden (even though months had passed). Idk. I just felt a little detached from their romance, for some reason. 😞

I am glad, though, that Danni and Rose actually communicated with each other! I’m sick and tired of miscommunication that gets dragged out just for the sake of conflict, and this book didn’t have that! 

When Danni broke up with Rose halfway through she explained herself really well (and in a way that I fully agreed with, btw!! Danni was extremely mature!). Rose started trying to make Danni jealous by holding Alfie’s hand and stuff, which felt a little vindictive, but I guess it made sense for her character, in that moment.

I thought Danni’s justification for getting back together with Rose was quite absurd, though. 🙄 She was so smart about the breakup and had *very valid* reasons for it, so seeing her later say that breaking up months or years in the future can’t hurt more than breaking up after dating for only like, 2 weeks, was just…… 🫤🫤🫤 Girl. Let’s be serious. 2 weeks vs maybe YEARS? One will hurt MUCH MORE than the other. Be so for real right now. 🙄

Another thing I didn’t love was Harriet’s inclusion in the story. When Harriet’s drunk she misreads the signs and thinks Danni wants to kiss her, so she kisses Danni. Now, I’m not saying that was right – I’m the #1 defender of asking for consent for even the smaller acts! However, it kind of felt like people were being too hard on Harriet??? I totally understand Danni not wanting to be friends with Harriet anymore! Rose, though… She was soooo quick to threaten Harriet, meanwhile Alfie did pretty much the same thing (not while drunk) and she didn’t even think about it? Maybe it’s because that happened to her, and not to her gf, though. I’m not trying to defend Harriet. It’s just that the double standard left me a little 😵‍💫 up until Rose finally called Alfie out for doing the same thing she hated Harriet for (except Alfie hadn’t been wasted).

I’m happy that the 3rd act conflict wasn’t a stupid breakup due to miscommunication. Instead, it was Danni getting outed and expelled for drinking + Rose deciding she didn’t want to stay in the closet forever and would rather give up her future as queen. These conflicts made sense for their characters and I like how they were resolved.

Regarding the writing: it flowed well and was easy to read. There were some instances of telling instead of showing, but, overall, I thought the book was good, in terms of writing. There were a couple of typos and a continuity mistake (Danni’s bff goes from Hayley to Rachel lol), but I’m sure those will be corrected in the final version. Also, I think it’d be better if the epilogue was “X years later” instead of “2026”, because this reeeally dates the book.



Overall, this was a really enjoyable book! Sophie Gonzales is incapable of writing a bad book, methinks. 🙂‍↕️ Also, THANK YOU for that mention of Zach from “If This Gets Out”. 🤭

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an eARC of this book!