It gives the reader a sense of anticipation and suspense from the very beginning and this carries through the entire book. As the anonymous informant continues to expose every last skeleton in the royal closet, James realises even those in his inner circle can't be trusted. His award-winning middle-grade debut, Me, My Dad and the End of the Rainbow, was described as 'One of the most joyful books you'll read this year' (The Bookseller), and he's since gone on to publish The Secret Sunshine Project, as well The King is Dead and How to Die Famous for older readers.

The King is Dead by Benjamin Dean | Waterstones The King is Dead by Benjamin Dean | Waterstones

Abel has to work with the other three, while also passing on information about them to get help with his own attempt to get justice for his brother. When I found out that this was about a gay, Black teen prince ascending to the throne and the drama and mystery that followed, I could not have requested an ARC fast enough. Overnight, it’s as if his entire secret-catalogue is on display, scandals that he kept close to his chest sprawled across the front pages, leaked online for the world to see.However, the reveal seems to have more to it and we find this out as we read further into the novel, leading up to the events at the end.

The King is Dead by Benjamin Dean | Waterstones

When his boyfriend suddenly goes missing, the royal secrets and scandals that only he knows start to leak online. I received an ARC from Little Brown Books for Young Readers and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Yea, there were a few different sceneries in the story, and yes, I know most notable people stay in their castles; I was hoping for a more colorful depiction of James’s surroundings. James reflects, “The world could barely cope with a Black king—they’d lose their heads if they knew he was gay too. Lifting the curtain on the hidden world of big production companies and their media darlings, contrasting what we see on the outside (and what sets social media on fire) with what's really going on.

I picked it up on impulse earlier today, and while it was a quick enough read that I don't exactly regret that impulse, I didn't quite get anything out of this. It seems like James and Eddie's mother, before she became the first Black person to marry into the royal lineage, would have—or should have—at least considered what it would mean for her future children to become royal heirs to a monarchy built on the bones of colonialism, but that didn't come up, which felt like a missed opportunity for more complexity. I downloaded it immediately, knowing that a train journey to London would be the perfect opportunity to get lost in the Hollywood hills. There were times when I thought that events could have happened without that explanation, leaving the reader to infer what the author intends them to mean. When reading a book about a tv show, you expect the book to be mainly centred around the events of the show but I didn't feel that with this book.