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)
The Suffragette Scandal

3/5. Historical het romance. She is a badass publisher of a controversial feminist press. He is the prodigal son of a noble house returned from criming his way around Europe. They team up to take down his awful brother.

I forget which one of you told me I'd like this book years ago, but you were right. It falls into one of my favorite romance categories: romances where the leads spend 95% of their time snarking at each other. It's great. There is suggestive banter about punctuation.

Also, this is a book about the struggle, and how it is done, and what it is for. As Milan and her heroine both say, about the work of emptying the ocean with a teaspoon. I've never read a romance that was so interested in that struggle, or how a woman would make it worthwhile to do, even as its ends seem impossible. It's a fitting end to this series which has been, in one way or another, about various kinds of social justice around the edges. This book centers that, and it works.

I was less interested in the romance – he does a thing that is so dumb and contrived that I never really got over it, even though it is a thing that particular person damaged in that particular way would have done. But I would have read about the press and her work and her friends a lot more.

Also, you're damn right he eats her out and is grateful for the chance.
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)
The Countess Conspiracy (The Brothers Sinister Book 3)

3/5. Historical romance. He's a controversial and successful scientist investigating inheritance patterns! She's the woman whose work is presented under his name because that's the only way it will be accepted!

Oh man, I'll say one thing for Courtney Milan, she always leaves me with a lot to think about.

This is almost awesome. It's full of things I like, including frank discussions of infertility, sex other than penis-in-vagina (this is quite rare in historicals), a network of women looking out for each other, female genius, difficult families.

But I just can't. If I wanted to make a joke out of it, I would say that I've never read a het romance during which I muttered "have these people never heard of anal sex?" so many times. (For real though, endless drama about how she can't ever ever risk pregnancy, so penis-in-vagina sex is really fraught even with birth control, but this is a het historical so even Milan won't go there). I could say that I found the extreme emotional pitch of this book way out of my taste. The hero and heroine have fraught, quavery-voiced conversations from page one to the very end, and it was just too fucking much.

But here's the real heart of it. This book is, as most people will conclude from reading the synopsis, about a kind of coming out. The heroine tells the truth about her work, eventually, to various people in various ways. And while the book does an . . . okay job presenting the social and familial consequences that come down on her head for it, the structure is enraging. It aligns the coming out with the heroine's journey to reclaim her self-worth and identity, and I hate these narratives. You know what I'm talking about, where a piece of media implicitly tells you that being in the closet is about the closeted person's issues, not about, you know, danger or fear of reprisal or privacy or or or. When done in queerness narratives, this sort of framing is poisonous. It's not much better here, in my mind, where a secret is kept to protect a woman from misogyny, but hey it's cool, she can bust the closet door down once she believes in herself. Because, as we all know, that's how you overcome misogyny. Aaaargh.

Whatever. This is a very good historical about mostly feminism, and it will not drive many people bonkers the way it did me. Also, it's on sale right now, if that's relevant.
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)
The Heiress Effect (The Brothers Sinister Book 2)

Note: I discovered in the process of linking this that it's currently $0.99 on Kindle, if that's of interest to anybody.

3/5. Historical. Heiress makes herself deliberately repellant to suitors for her own reasons; she and a blossoming politician fall in love, much to their mutual irritation.

Sweet, with a core of genuine complexity, because it really is an actualfacts bad idea for this couple to get together, in ways that aren't just silly authorial manufacturing.

But here's something I've just figured out about Courtney Milan. A bunch of reviewers have complained about the historical anachronism in the fact that she writes about social justice. Her characters are involved in labor movements, women's rights, economic justice, etc. I find it quite problematic to call that anachronistic – doing that is to suggest that social justice is itself an anachronism, which is obviously incorrect. Laborers and women fought for their rights in the nineteenth century, and fought and fought and fought, and wrote about it, and thought very hard and complexly about it. Saying its anachronistic for characters in a historical romance to be concerned with these things is to erase that struggle and those people, and also to participate in the myth of progress, the idea that the past was a land of injustice and that the arc of justice bends solidly to now. Injustice having been defeated, don't you know.

So I don't agree with that critique at all. But there is something . . . comfy wish-fulfillment about Milan's social justice writing. And I've finally figured out what it is.

Her characters are all conscious of oppression. They all understand what it is, they all can perceive its dimensions as it comes down upon them, they all recognize it in the moment. I realized this when reading the POV of a minor character who is an Indian gentleman, subject to overt and covert racism at every turn, and who has a pithy observation or a pointed comment for each micro and macro aggression, no matter how blatant or subtle, with an ability to put things immediately in context.

And that's the fantasy of these books. Not that historical people resisted oppression, but that they all, on a person-to-person level, could spot it in the wild. Because that is one of the most insidious things about oppression – it can have its foot on your throat, you can have spent your life resisting it, and sometimes, often, you won't know. I have spent over a decade and a half thinking and writing about the various sorts of intersectional oppression I have experienced, and still, on a regular basis I don't recognize it until long after the fact. I'm sure I miss aspects of it all the time. Several times a week I will walk away from an encounter with a slow, creeping feeling down my back, and then days later it will occur to me out of nowhere that, oh, huh, that guy was absolutely trying to put me in my place for daring to be younger and more successful than him; that medical professional was attempting to make me straight by sheer force of will; that cab driver was fundamentally offended that I refused his help to the door because I didn't match his notions of what disability looks like and it made him angry.

You live in the ocean; you don't see the ocean.

Courtney Milan's characters see the ocean. All the time, in every situation. That's the wish-fulfillment fantasy, being able to name oppression and label it, and see it coming and see it going. That's the part I don't believe.
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)
The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister, #1)The Duchess War by Courtney Milan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


He's a duke with a rather obnoxious case of the privilege guilts. She's an apparently timid young lady whose tragic past, for once, has nothing to do with illegitimate children. They do exactly what you think they are going to do.

A lot of my friends rave about Courtney Milan. I thought this book was okay, if not spectacular (the duke's aforesaid angst about the terribleness of being so wealthy and powerful grated on my nerves, but ymmv). And I really think a book with a reference to war in the title and a setup promising a competition should have . . . you know . . . more competition. But that's just me being disgruntled because I love romances where the leads spend the whole time attempting to best each other, and this said it was that but really was not.

But what I meant to say is, the entire book was saved by the wedding night sex. Which, first time through, was terrible. Ahahaha, I love it. And our heroine is flat out like, "no, you totally did that wrong, that can't be it." The whole book was worth that.

Not sure where to jump to next in her catalog – thoughts?




View all my reviews

Profile

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

May 2025

S M T W T F S
    123
456 78910
1112131415 1617
181920 21222324
2526 27 2829 3031

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 6th, 2025 05:54 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios