Tilly Maguire and the royal wedding mess by Emma Grey

Angus and Robertson, 2018. ISBN: 9781460755051.
(Age: Young adult) Tilly Maguire and the royal wedding mess by Emma Grey is a contemporary romance novel catered towards a young adult audience. We follow Tilly Maguire, a bubbly and fresh out of high school eighteen-year-old as she embarks on a gap year in London working for a major PR company set to cover a royal event. When things go awry Tilly is swept up in a whirlwind of social media scandal and a heart throbbing romance with her childhood celebrity crush.
The characters in this novel were oftentimes one dimensional and cliched. No character seemed to stray from their assigned position in the story e.g. villain wanted to ruin the main character's life for no special reason and the love interest immediately falls in love for no reason beside the main character being 'not like other girls' he has dated. The diversity in this story felt somewhat forced and added as a bonus to appeal to the younger generation instead of actually being genuine or well informed about the LGBT+ community.
The plot was typical of the young adult genre. It heavily focused on the romance and nothing much else. Things moved too quickly for there to be any emotional build up or for the readers to form connections with the characters.
The imagery and language choices were also rather cliched  e.g. 'she looked like a model' etc . . . This seemed to counteract the whole point of having diversity in the story as there was seemingly nothing diverse about the way the characters or settings were described.
Overall, I would recommend this book to a younger audience. It is fast paced and easy to read. However, there is nothing unique about the plot or the characters but if you enjoy a book with a heavy romance element to it I think the cliche aspects of the story could be overlooked.
Amy Folker (Student)