Swoony Sunday: "The Prince and the Player"
The new royal romance from Nora Phoenix is a fun, sexy, and swoony love story that shows the truth of the enduring idea that opposites really do attract.
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Welcome to another edition of “Swoony Sunday,” where I’ll be reviewing romance in all of its forms: film, TV, books. As a Pisces, I love to love, and what better way to express that than through writing about romance, the genre that’s all about finding your heart’s desire?
Warning: Spoilers for the novel follow.
I have a confession to make. As a romance reader, I am an absolute sucker for a royal romance novel. No matter how many of them I read, and no matter how much they make generous use of all of the tropes, I never get tired of reading them. Perhaps it’s the royalist in me, or perhaps it’s just the Pisces, or perhaps it’s both. In any case, any time that I see a royal romance available for review I make sure to gobble it up, and let me tell you that I am never disappointed.
This brings me to The Prince and the Player, the newest book from Nora Phoenix. This is a fun and sexy romance that, with its brisk pace and lovable (if also irritating) characters, doesn’t outstay its welcome. It’s the perfect kind of romance to welcome in the spring and its air of new love and second chances.
When the story begins, Norwegian Prince Tore has decided to go to the US, where he will enroll at college and become a soccer (football) player, with no one the wiser as to his true identity. Once there, however, he crosses paths with team captain Farron, who takes an immediate dislike to this rich boy who is horning in on his territory. Unsurprisingly, this dislike soon morphs into something else and, after a passionate but awkward kiss, they start a little arrangement wherein they kiss and fuck but don’t catch feelings. What starts as a friends with benefits arrangement, however, soon becomes something much deeper and more meaningful as they realize that their burgeoning sexual chemistry is but the harbinger of deeper feelings.
This is very much an enemies-to-lovers type story, and Phoenix is quite adept at making it clear from the jump just how much these characters are into each other, though it takes them both a while to realize this fact. Of the two of them Tore is definitely the sunshine, while Farron is the epitome of grumpy. Like so many other opposites, however, their differences end up complementing one another, even though they each have their own journeys to acceptance, both of one another and of themselves.
Lurking in the background during their romance is the inescapable fact that Tore is a member of the Norwegian royal family–when the story begins he is actually quite close to the throne–and this secret weighs heavily on him and eventually presents a challenge to his burgeoning relationship with Farron. Fortunately Phoenix doesn’t beat us over the head with this aspect of Tore’s identity and, while it does cause some problems, they are relatively easily overcome. Tore’s family, particularly his mother, is refreshingly open and accepting of her son’s bisexuality, and both his parents and his sisters are welcoming of Farron when he finally comes to Oslo for their inevitable reconciliation.
To say that this book crackles with intense sexual chemistry would be selling it short. I know I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but I continue to think that it’s important–vital, even–to see explicit sex scenes in M/M romance. We’re living in an era in which queer desire in all of its forms is constantly under assault, and so it’s all the more special when we get to see two men learning how to be intimate with one another. As in the best of romances, the sex isn’t there to titillate, though it certainly does that, but instead to show us how these two people are finding new aspects of themselves that they’d never thought existed. Gay sex isn’t for the faint of heart, after all, and their hot and heavy encounters require some research and accommodation on both of their parts.
Before these two men can really be together, though, both Tore and Farron have a lot of growing to do. For Tore, the struggle is twofold. On the one hand, he has to find some way of getting Farron to loosen up and stop hating him just because he’s rich. On the other, he has to grapple with the fact that he is a member of a European royal family and that this necessarily imposes some limits as to what he can do, both as a soccer player and as a young man figuring out his sexuality. As his romance with Farron heats up and they each start to fall in love with the other, this becomes an ever more pressing issue.
Fortunately for both Farron and the reader, Tore is a genuinely good man, someone who wants what’s best for everyone in his life, whether that be his sisters or Farron. One of the novel’s most poignant scenes occurs when Farron invites Tore back to his house for Thanksgiving, allowing the other man an intimate glimpse of his family and their struggles. A brattier prince would no doubt look down on Farron’s humble beginnings, and that’s just what the soccer player thinks will happen. Tore, however, is cut from very different cloth, and it’s clear that he loves Farron’s family from the jump. If you don’t find yourself falling in love with Tore, then I really don’t know what to tell you.
For Farron, on the other hand, the roadblocks are both more prosaic and yet, because of that, more emotionally wrenching. Unlike Tore he’s never known what it was like to be financially comfortable, and he carries a pretty major chip on his shoulder when it comes to engaging with those who had more money than he did growing up. His growing love for Tore, however, allows him to open up and reveal parts of himself that he’s kept secret. Some readers found him a bit of a pill, but I actually think he read as quite authentic to me. When you’ve grown up under the oppression of poverty, and when you come into contact with those who wear their privilege with ease, you don’t always act rationally.
I also give this book a lot of credit for its bi representation. Neither Farron nor Tore have been with men before the time that the book begins, and so their feelings and attraction for one another comes as an even greater surprise. Phoenix handles this with the same light but emotionally honest touch that she demonstrates with the rest of the book. I loved getting to spend time with these characters and to learn the ins and outs of their psychology, to see them in all of their glorious and flawed and tender humanity.
The comparisons of The Prince and the Player to Casey McQuiston’s Red, White and Royal Blue are apt, but there’s also a lot of Ted Lasso in its DNA, too. The world that this book presents is one that is almost totally devoid of homophobia or biphobia, which might strain credulity a bit considering the way that organized sports is still not exactly the most affirming of spaces. And, while I may not be a huge sports fan, I also appreciated the way that Phoenix really did immerse us in the world of soccer and what it’s like to be on the field. Soccer isn’t just window-dressing; it’s a key part of the plot and the world through which the characters move.
All in all, I have to say that I loved this book even more than I thought I would. I’l be eagerly looking forward to the other royal romances that Phoenix has in the hopper!
My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of the book.