The Whitefire Crossing by Courtney Schafer

The Whitefire Crossing

2/5. Fantasy about the smuggler hired to get a runaway mage across the mountains to the sort of rival magical city.

Meh. It's not just that this book alternates between first person and close third, which is one of those things you can totally do . . . if you have a reason for it. There is no reason here.

It's not just that. It's mostly that there's a pattern to the women in this book, such as they are. They're either tortured and murdered to fuel male angst . . . or kept as an unwitting hostage by one man to control another . . . or lied to and shuffled offstage the moment the plot starts happening to keep them safe or . . . actually, I think I've run out of women.

For Real by Alexis Hall

For Real

DNF. M/M romance about the uptight emergency services doctor who sort of accidentally picks up a nineteen-year-old top at a kink mixer.

I should have liked this. It's well-observed and thoughtful and unashamed of its kinks, of which it has many. And it's playing with tropes in a way I appreciate – the financial and class and experiential power in this relationship is all with the sub, which is frankly refreshing. But it also hit a lot of my hard cringe embarrassment squicks. There's the classic 'mistaken for father and son,' for one thing.

The thing is, though, that I'm having one of those years where I don't seem to like half the things I'm reading, and I have no idea if that has anything to do with the actual books. Instead of just being an artifact of the year I'm having. As an example, June is on pace to be the month with the highest billable hours in my entire career, and my father is about to die, and my dog is retiring. So what the fuck do I know at this point? Not much.