lightreads: a partial image of a etymology tree for the Indo-European word 'leuk done in white neon on black'; in the lower left is (Default)
lightreads ([personal profile] lightreads) wrote2021-08-28 12:01 pm

Olivia Waite F/F romances

The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics and The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows

3/5. A pair of related early nineteenth century British historical F/F romances. Lovely passages on female desire interspersed with assorted plots that mostly worked for me, but occasionally went too hard into defeating injustice. Like…IDK…there's nothing wrong with historical romances where the protagonists triumph on the personal level over some particular exercise of misogyny or homophobia, and there's a lot right with them, but I think I've just read too many historical romances about that in the past few years. Is anyone even writing romances that aren't about that in the past few years?

Anyway, the first is about a young woman astronomer falling for her older widowed patroness, and the second is about a grumpy widowed printer accidentally making friends and then more with the local beekeeper, if that's your sort of thing. I preferred the second volume – the heroines are older and tireder, and their love blooms more slowly and sweetly for it.

Post a comment in response:

This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting