I so thoroughly enjoyed The Royal We (see my review here), a loosely-veiled fiction telling of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s courtship (and when I say loosely, I mean, really loose), I couldn’t wait for the sequel because the original ended on a cliffhanger. I do recommend that you read or listen to The Royal We before tackling The Heir Affair (AbeBooks) (Amazon). There’s too much characterization and backstory that is only touched upon in the sequel.

From the publisher: After a scandalous secret turns their fairy-tale wedding into a nightmare, Rebecca “Bex” Porter and her husband Prince Nicholas are in self-imposed exile. The public is angry. The Queen is even angrier. And the press is salivating. Cutting themselves off from friends and family, and escaping the world’s judgmental eyes, feels like the best way to protect their fragile, all-consuming romance.

But when a crisis forces the new Duke and Duchess back to London, the Band-Aid they’d placed over their problems starts to peel at the edges. Now, as old family secrets and new ones threaten to derail her new royal life, Bex has to face the emotional wreckage she and Nick left behind: with the Queen, with the world, and with Nick’s brother Freddie, whose sins may not be so easily forgotten—nor forgiven.

Once again, I listened to the audio version of the book and Christine Lakin brought her A-game. She makes every character believable, from Bex and Prince Nicholas, to the bombastic Prince Richard and Queen Eleanor. My only complaint is Lacey, Bex’s twin sister, who comes across as ditzy when in fact she’s very smart and more settled down in this book.

The book title tells it all: now that Bex and Nick are married, the pressure is on to produce an heir. However, without revealing any spoilers, as with anything Bex and Nick tackle, there are complications to having a baby, not the least of which is that they want to wait a couple of years to have one, while everyone else does not, and part of the book is baby-making centered. The press is ruthless in their “is she or isn’t she” hounding that is all too familiar to royals the moment a couple gets married. I remember when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge got married, the press was relentless until Catherine finally got pregnant.

But there the similarities end between the Cambridges and the real royal family. Nothing that follows is remotely close to what we, as the public, know about the real royals, which makes this take on Bex and Nick refreshing and surprising. There’s no playbook to follow.

There’s also the whole sub-plot of Freddie and Nick and Bex, and what that all means. That’s why you really need to read the first book, to understand what happened with Freddie, to make things more clear in The Heir Affair. I was happy to see Freddie finally seem to get his crap together for the most part. Sort of like Prince Harry in real life.

There’s also a nice little subplot about Queen Eleanor’s sister Georgina, whose house Nick and Bex move in to. Almost nothing has been done to the apartment since she died some years before, so it’s up to the newlyweds to redesign, redecorate, and decide what to keep or toss from Georgina’s almost hoarding-like abode. Bex stumbles upon some half-secrets, meaning she only knows half of the secret, and there’s a nice little mystery that gets resolved at the end of the book.

There’s also a major health crisis when Queen Eleanor has a stroke and Prince Richard has to take over as Regent for a while. Just when Bex thought she was bringing Eleanor over to her side. It takes many months, but the queen does eventually recover, for the most part. While recuperating, Bex gets her hooked on American baseball, most specifically the Cubs, her favorite team (and our family’s team as well, despite the fact that the Milwaukee Brewers are only 100 miles away). And of course, The Royal We took place in 2015, so The Heir Affair takes places in 2016, when the Cubs finally won the world series again, so I thought that was a great addition of Bex’s American customs to the book.

Overall, The Heir Affair is a satisfying sequel to The Royal We. And I certainly can smell sequel in the works, for which I would happily await.

For more reviews, visit www.bargain-sleuth.com

Never miss a post! Subscribe to our email list below.

Join our Facebook page Bargain Sleuth Book Reviews or join our book group here.

We are also on Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and now Tumblr. Check us out!

This post contains affiliate links.