Review: Royce Rolls by Margaret Stohl

Title: Royce Rolls

Author: Margaret Stohl

Publisher: Freeform

My rating: 3.75 Stars

 
Well, here we have one of my most anticipated books of 2017!

Royce Rolls is a satire of reality TV. It centers around Bently Royce, who stars in the popular reality show Rolling with the Royces along with her publicity obsessed mother Mercedes, her narcissistic sister Porsche, and her brother Maybach "Bach" who may seem like a "cute gay brother" on the outside, but is hiding a bad gambling problem.

With their show on the brink of cancellation, Bentley clashes with her mother and sister, who get more attention on the show and shut Bentley out of the planning. Finally, Bentley decides that she's had enough. She wants to do something that no one else in her family has ever done: go to college.

However, Bentley realizes that if she wants to save her family, she's got to save their show first. To keep Rolling with the Royces going, Bentley has to come up with the perfect stunt to bring back the show's popularity.

I'm a sucker for any book that's about celebrities or reality TV. Despite the fact that I don't watch much reality TV, I find it intriguing, so I was hooked as soon as I read the summary. I've read a few other books by Margaret Stohl, and though I didn't absolutely love them, I enjoyed them enough to check out some more of her work.

While I can't say that Royce Rolls completely disappointed me, I will say that it's not everything I expected. I had a bad start with it. Just a few pages in, I was thinking "Oh no. This is boring." And then it started to go in a somewhat cheesy direction, so I had a "No!!! I anticipated this book so much but I actually don't like it!!!" moment. Luckily, I remained patient and calm, and as I kept reading, I became more and more interested in it until I unexpectedly finished it in one night.

I've pretty much had this same experience with all the Margaret Stohl books I've read. When I read Black Widow: Red Vengeance a couple months ago, I initially put the book aside because I thought it was boring. But when I finally picked it up again, I devoured it. I guess the takeaway is that you have to be patient with Margaret Stohl's books, and they will wow you!

This book has a slow start. It takes a while for everything to be established, and the conflict doesn't start to come in until nearly halfway through the book. I wasn't excited until I reached that point. This book is also written in a somewhat unique way: In edition to normal narration, the story is told through news articles, tweets, and blog posts. It's also filled with footnotes, supposedly "from the director" of the show. Personally, I like books with that sort of in-world content, so I enjoyed it.

 This book also features an unreliable narrator, which I always find interesting. To be honest, I think I still don't completely understand how the whole scheme worked on in the end...

I was surprised at how much I ended up liking the characters. At first, many of them seem shallow and unlikable, but there's a surprising amount of character development and it turns out to be really heartwarming. The Royces have a strange, dysfunctional family dynamic. I loved seeing this play out. Bentley is a likable heroine, and though her personality didn't really stick out to me, I enjoyed reading about her.

I had a bit of an issue with the humor in this book. Though I didn't find it exactly "unfunny", I never actually laughed while reading. In my brain, I realized that the jokes were funny, but it wasn't enough to make me laugh. Sometimes I felt like there was too much banter and too many complicated jokes. 

Overall, Royce Rolls was a unique, enjoyable read. I would recommend it if you like reading about reality TV and celebrities. If you're willing to be patient, you will be rewarded by it.