Playing the Palace by Paul Rudnick

Narrated by Michael Urie

When I read the synopsis of Playing the Palace a few months back, my immediate reaction was a big, fat NOPE. (Any author who uses the term “Crown Prince” to describe the heir to the British throne and doesn’t bother to discover that while the term CAN be applied to the heir apparent to a monarch, the term is NOT used in the UK where the male heir to the throne is the Prince of Wales – gets an immediate no from me). I even put the book on my “No Way José” shelf on Goodreads! BUT. The offer of a review copy of the audiobook came my way and as, at the time, I was completely out of review copies, I thought I’d give it a try. Just to see if it could possibly be as bad as I expected.

Long story short: It is.

Carter Ogden, an associate event architect in NYC, meets Edgar, the Prince of Wales at the UN, where Carter’s company is organising an event. Edgar asks Carter if he’ll listen to his speech and maybe give him a few pointers, and within minutes, they’re almost-kissing – but are interrupted before any actual lip-lock can take place and Edgar has to leave. Carter doesn’t expect to ever see Edgar again, so he’s surprised when he’s invited to dinner at a swanky restaurant the next night. Except that instead of eating at the swanky restaurant, they end up at an IHop. Yes, really. After that, it’s radio silence for two weeks – until Edgar turns up at Carter’s work with a picnic lunch; he explains that he’s going back home in a couple of days and would like to see Carter again – which is how come he ends up being Carter’s plus one for his sister’s wedding… and at the end of the evening, going back to Carter’s flat for some royal rumpy-pumpy. (The bedroom door is tightly closed, btw.)

Then – and this is when things go from bad to worse – Edgar invites Carter to accompany him to England so Carter can meet HIS family. That is – his grandmother the Queen.

That’s the set up and of course the story proceeds exactly as expected. I have to say that for the first few chapters, I was thinking fairly optimistically; I really liked Carter’s voice and his snarky commentary, and new-to-me narrator Michael Urie captures his engaging mix of sarcasm and vulnerability really well. The author’s sense of humour comes through very strongly and I found myself actually laughing out loud at a couple of points (his description of the venue for Carter’s sister’s wedding reception as “Neoclassical New Jersey Mob Boss” is one that stands out, as does a later one, where Prince Edgar’s major-domo, James, stands waiting for Carter to arrive at JFK with a name board reading “Peasant” – that one had me almost snorting tea.)

BUT. The actual story is full of SO much implausibility and utter ridiculousness, and the romance – which moves so fast that it blurs into non-existence – is so disappointing that my optimism soon evaporated and I only finished listening so that I could write this review. Playing the Palace is a rom-com without the “rom”.

So, in the list of my not-favourite-things about this book, we have “no romance” at the top. Here are some of the others.

Those are just the things I can remember in detail; there were SO MANY others as I was listening that were just as crass and cringeworthy, but I’ve obviously done a good job obliterating them from my memory. And the sad thing is that the author does make a number of very pertinent points – about media intrusion, about how difficult it is to be a gay, out celebrity and a number of other things – but they just get buried beneath the onslaught of Dumb.

Sigh.

Michael Urie does a decent job with the narration. The English accent he employs for Edgar is pretty good with only a few small slips, and the deep, booming voice he uses for James reminded me of Cogsworth in the original (animated) Beauty and the Beast! He delivers James’ dry, snarky comebacks brilliantly, and as I said at the outset, he’s also terrific as Carter – who is the only PoV character. With the secondary characters, the accent is more wobbly, as he attempts some regional accents that he’d have been best advised to avoid. He doesn’t do much to differentiate between male and female characters though; it’s obvious that different characters are speaking, but there’s no real attempt to make the women sound feminine, which meant I had to rely on dialogue tags quite a few times. Mr. Urie is a talented performer though, and I’d happily listen to him again. Just… not in this book.

After all that, if you decide NOT to steer clear of Playing the Palace, then on your own head be it!

Caz