I do not read a lot of biographies because I am not always very interested in the lives of others. It has always seemed a bit voyeuristic reading about the lives of living people in particular. I can count on one hand the number of biographies I have read. I read this one particularly because I have followed what has been done to this couple from the announcement that they were dating to this very day. I wanted to get an idea of why and how things seemed to get so out of hand. It gets 5 stars for pushing for truth and integrity instead of lies and hate-mongering.

If you go into this expecting major revelations then you will be disappointed. This is not intended as a tell-all or reverse smear campaign against those who bashed them. This is about setting the record as straight as can be while still maintaining a sense of personal responsibility. This is not a counter to the trashy novels which have come out which merely continued to bash the couple and continue their agenda of smearing globally. I would also say to avoid the one-star
reviews which are also a part of the wider agenda by those who have a bias against the subjects of the book.

I like the overall set-up of the book and can feel the differences in which the author had input into what as it was written. Each chapter is a self-contained capsule dealing with an individual idea or situation. For instance, we get to start with the first dates after they are set up and move forward in time from there. The extra information regarding what happened around their personal lives is great but we also get some insight into those nasty headlines and the people who helped to keep the hate and ugliness going. As I said above, there are no major revelations but there is still good fleshing out and debunking of a lot of the salacious and sensational articles which have been written over the past years about the couple.

This is not perfect because there are several issues with missing words, the wrong word, and grammar pretty much throughout the book. They needed a good proofreader. I do the same thing because my mind is moving faster than my fingers and I am sure I caught everything I had in my head, so I always cut a little slack when I see it. It was not as distracting as it could have been though. The jumping around in time was distracting the first time it happened but you get used it. When talking about one thing they will segue into a past situation that is connected to one or the other.

I enjoyed the read and I have a great deal of respect for the authors, particularly Omid for taking the time to try and set the record straight even at the expense of being bullied for doing so. We got some information that was withheld originally, though I wonder if anyone noticed that some tidbits were revealed. For those interested in the subject matter this will be a good read, for those not so interested but who need to purchase to malign it is what it is.

Maybe not a masterpiece but well worth the time and effort to give it a listen or read. I have three ways of doing so, and it has a great place in my library.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Racism in the UK takes a different form than it does in the United States, but there is no mistaking its existence and how engrained it is. A major theme of racism in the UK centers on the question of who is authentically “English.” It can come through in subtle acts of bias, micro-aggressions such as the Palace staffer who told the biracial co-author of this book, “I never expected you to speak the way you do,” or the Daily Mail headline, “Memo to Meghan: We Brits Prefer True Royalty to Fashion Royalty.” While their columnist was criticizing Meghan for her Vogue editorials, there was another way to read it, and that was that to be British meant to be born and bred in the UK—and be white.