lightreads | Entries tagged with romance

At Midnight Comes the Cry

3/5. Tenth in this series of mysteries about the episcopal priest and the police chief (they are married with baby at this point).

I’m always happy to spend more time with these characters, but I’m gonna be honest here: I come to this series for small town stuff and mysteries and a light but intense approach to relationships. I do not come for white nationalist terrorism or action movie stuff. And yet, guess what I got here.

This also feels like a final book, with a weirdly pasted on ‘five years later’ epilogue. Which is fine if that’s how it is, but I was disappointed in the treatment that a secondary couple got. She is so good at relationships that shouldn’t work but do. In this case, a divorced woman in her thirties with young kids and a history in the porn industry, and an early twenties rookie on the police force. She does messy but magnetic so well, and she let them develop over many books. So I found the conclusion(?) to their story here, and how little attention was paid to the thorny emotional stuff between them, to be uncharacteristic and disappointing. Same take on the resolution(?) of the addiction plotline.

Content notes: White nationalism of several flavors, violence (domestic and otherwise)

Lady Hotspur

3/5. What if Henry IV (loosely) but make it epic fantasy and make most of the major players women, and make most of those women queer.

Yes, there is a prequel book that I did not read, because I do what I want. This would probably be richer if you read in publication order, but it’s one of those situations where the prior book is set several generations before, so, you know.

Anyway, yes, the premise sounds great, and large portions of this book are wonderful. This manages to feel Shakespearean, and I don’t mean that it feels tragic (though it has that mode). It’s bawdy and political and deeply concerned with how history turns upon character, and how people stand or fall on their flaws. It also has a tremendous sense of the numinous and, getting somewhat less Shakespearean here but also not in another realm or anything, a wonderful touch with multiple shades of queerness and how that functions or doesn’t in monarchist systems.

However, while I’ve read books that were too long, I can’t remember the last time I read one that was at least a hundred thousand words too long. Phew. That is truly impressive bloat. I would be rating this higher if it were like 40% shorter (which would still make it a damn long book, to be clear). I lost patience with this multiple times. I always came back and found something to enjoy again, but man.

Read if you really like queer lady knights, women running the world, that Shakespeare feeling, and a book that feels as if it is tremendously slow even as many things are happening.

Content notes: Murder, war, references to child abuse, miscarriage, cancer.

Hemlock & Silver

4/5. One of her standalone twisted fairy tales, this one about the poisoning expert called in to figure out if the king’s daughter is being poisoned, and the strange and horrifying magical discoveries she makes.

This is good, but it finally clarified for me what is wrong with her romances. The good stuff first: a wonderfully practical, weird, obsessive, traditionally unbeautiful heroine. A series of animal companions, talking and otherwise. A genuinely creepy place to explore. A sad fairy tale under it all.

The romance: This one is not as bad as many of her others, I will say. But I finally put my finger on what’s wrong with them. It’s that she spent the first half of this book developing this woman into a vivid, quirky, peculiar, wonderful character. And the second the romance is on page, every jot of that character work vanishes and she reverts to boring and clumsy romance beats. Like the heroine coming to the conclusion, despite vast mountains of evidence, that the guy is repulsed by her. A thing that could happen? Sure. A thing that could happen with this character? I suppose, but you’d have to lay a lot of groundwork. Fundamentally, I think her heroines, which are the best part of these books, stop being themselves when it comes to romance, and I hate that.

Content notes: Past child death, past murder of spouse, creepiness with mirrors, body horror.

Betrothed to the Emperor and Emperor's Wrath

2/5. M/M fantasy romance about the royal twins raised to kill the emperor of the encroaching empire, except when they are presented, the emperor chooses the brother to marry, not the sister as planned. And then stuff happens.

I got sucked in based on the trope set, even though I knew damn well this was not going to satisfy. And I was right. There’s something extra frustrating about someone doing tropes you’re into, but with such limited skill that nothing really lands. Here, for example – the books are trying to do fake/pretend relationship but whoops it’s also real, but they’re so incoherent about it and so impatient to get to the porn that I couldn’t keep track from one scene to the next whether we were treating it as real or not. These books also do that thing where our first person narrator totally misses that the guy is into him, but it’s done so clumsily here that it just makes him look incredibly, pathologically stupid.

/cranky

A Letter from the Lonesome Shore

3/5. Sequel to last year’s charming, epistolary science fantasy novel about mental illness and academia. More of the same concludes this duology, but either I was cranky when reading (I definitely was) or this book misses a step (I think it does). This is still charming epistolary science-fantasy with a lot of feelings about academia and structures of knowledge and inquiry. But some of the small lingering questions I had from the first book about how this world works are much bigger and even less resolved now in ways I do not enjoy. Like, there are extremely basic things that I’m still wait, what? about.

But if you want an epistolary romance about two unusual people – multiple mental illnesses floating around, plus someone on the ase spectrum – then I do recommend these. And I would be curious for other opinions on the resolution of E’s story here. I’m of multiple minds about what it is doing in terms of mental illness, and I haven’t resolved that yet. Is it treating her social anxiety as a kind of superpower that lets her do a hard and isolating thing that many others could not? Maybe. Or is it doing something far less positive with it?

Hidden Nature

3/5. Her latest romantic suspense standalone about the woman recovering back in her home town after getting shot (she’s natural resources police). She gets interested in a series of disappearances, and also meets the new local contractor.

You know what’s the most starry-eyed fantasy of a Nora Roberts book? It’s not the romance – this one is rather lifeless. It’s not even the ubiquity of honest and dedicated cops (she put a black cop in this one, you guys, if you’re keeping track of Nora Roberts’s flailing and minuscule attempts to grapple with her career of coppaganda).

No, the biggest fantasy is of home renovation that is quick, easy, successful, and beautiful. Mostly done, in this case, by a guy who apparently . . . learned his trade skills in a summer with Habitat for Humanity and that’s it? I have concerns.

Content notes: Violence, murder, usual killer POV grossness.

.The Mimicking of Known Successes and two more

4/5. A series (two novellas and a short novel) about an investigator on Jupiter who reconnects with her old girlfriend, a professor, to solve crime.

Ignore that this is Holmes/Watson. I sure did. Making them lesbians does not suddenly make me care.

Also ignore the summary above which makes these sound like mysteries. I mean, they are. That is what is going on here. And the mysteries are fine, whatever.

No, I read these for the worldbuilding, which got more and more interesting the deeper we go. Our narrator – the professor – is a “classicist,” meaning someone who studies old Earth ecology pre climate collapse in the theoretical hope of one day rebuilding that ecosystem. As opposed to the “modern” faculty, who study life as lived on Jupiter, can you imagine, what a waste. It starts out reading like a bit of a joke, sometimes lightly funny, sometimes scathing, at the expense of academia. And then it gets more and more nuanced, and our narrator starts to untangle ever deepening layers of her biases, and questioning the project of her university and her life. And she has to ask genuine questions about whether she was, in a particular instance, the villain. And I have almost never seen that done like this, where it is a real question for the character and for the narrative, not just some stupid character self-indulgent sob fest. No, there’s a real and complex question there, and these books let it breathe.

Content notes: Toxic academic politics, futuristic racism, violence, depressive episodes.

The Last Hour Between Worlds

4/5. A single mother, just two months post-partum, gets out for one night to attend a ball in her fantasy city. Which gets complicated when the whole ballroom keeps falling through levels of reality each time the clock strikes, and when her former crush turned professional enemy, the hot lady thief, is also on the case.

This is a lot of fun, and very stylish. Visually, I mean – there’s a lot going on here with what people are wearing and carrying, and with the shifting esthetics of each layer of reality. And you know I’m in favor of adventure books about mothers, particularly very new mothers like this one.

If you’re paying even moderate amounts of attention, none of these plot twists will rock you. But they are all pleasing to unwind, as is the whole book.

Content notes: Violence, temporary character death.

The Shots You Take

3/5. Another one of these M/M hockey romances. This one is even less about hockey than usual – old estranged teammates reconnect post retirement when one’s father dies. They have a lot of baggage having to do with how they used to sleep together, and one of them was in love and one of them had a lot of internalized homophobia.

I mean, I suppose someone did have to title a hockey romance that at some point.

Anyway, this one is nice, particularly for having actual adults in it. It also successfully walks that tough line where one half of the pairing treated the other half very poorly in the past, and there’s a lot of justifiable anger, but it is a romance after all so we have to retain some sympathy for both sides. So yeah, I liked this one fine. I’m not liking any romance more than fine at the moment, though, so who even knows what’s good anymore.

Content notes: Parental death and the raw aftermath.

Letters to Half Moon Street

3/5. Short epistolary queer norm historical romance with fantasy elements, about the shy (and possibly demi) younger son in London for the first time catching the eye of a society gentleman.

A charming frip of a book with good epistolary. This has all the trappings of an early nineteenth century historical romance, except it’s queer norm. The worldbuilding is paper thin – that’s not the point, I realize – but I’m the sort of person who asks too many questions of a book like this. Like okay, you’ve replaced heterosexism with a model that relies even more heavily on birth order, and yet that seems to have changed the way that class and inheritance and power work in this setting not at all or very little? How is that possible? Yes, I am interrogating the text from the wrong direction, I acknowledge I am the problem here. The author’s note is like “I wanted to write queer norm historical so I did and I stuck fantasy magic in it, so there,” and like, sure, I respect it. I’m just not the best at reading it.

Bitter Medicine

3.5/5. Urban romantasy about two fae-blooded people (well, technically she’s descended from a Chinese medicine god and he’s a half-elf), one a talented artist and magician, the other a sort of enforcer cursed with a terrible reputation and an actual curse.

I liked this ~~even though it’s het~~. The emotional beats are complex and thoughtful, and the writing is pleasant. Also, it’s so nice to have a romantasy about goddamn adults, you know? I mean, in this case they are both over a hundred, so they’d better be by now, but you know how it is.

Marking down for that thing where, if I poke the worldbuilding, it doesn’t so much poke back as jiggle alarmingly. There are fundamental facts about how this fantastical modern world works that I do not understand at all. So just go in with those senses turned down and you’ll have a good time, kay?

Content notes: Violence, magically-enforced obedience, shitty parents

A Gentleman's Gentleman

3/5. Historical trans m/m romance about the isolated earl who hires a valet for a trip to London to keep up appearances, because he has to find a wife for reasons, but oh yes, he’s trans.

Lovely slow burn historical that is very playful with several tropes – the dead twin, the tragic backstory, etc. -- all presented exactly as ordered, but in service to a trans narrative. I liked all of that a great deal, and Christopher himself is a charming mess.

I’m not rating this higher because the romance (with the valet, if that was unclear) did very little for me. This is single POV, which I think was done to preserve a late reveal in the book, but the net result is that the valet is something of a cipher and I just didn’t feel anything for these two as a pair (also, the reveal is not a surprise if you're paying attention at all, so not worth the trouble of concealing it, I think).

Still, I enjoyed this, and particularly recommend the audiobook for the delivery of Christopher’s dialogue. His fruity upper crust gentleman's accent is top tier.

Content notes: Loss of family, panic attacks, fear of outing, internalized transphobia.

A Ruse of Shadows

4/5. Book 8. Do not start here either.

Sherry Thomas is just really good at this. Even when she’s pulling the same tricks again – having our protagonists enact the whole plot of the book without ever explaining to the reader until the very end, false crime accusations again – I’m mostly happy to go for the ride. Here, that narrative secrecy works to enhance the way this book is also about the central romantic relationship, and how they decide what it’s going to be, and what it’s not, like adults and complicated people do.

Five Broken Blades

3/5. A group of six people come together to murder the unkillable god king, but they’re all liars, it gets complicated.

This is mis-marketed as gritty-ish twisty fantasy when it’s actually most interested in its romances (there are six characters, they enter the arc two-by-two). So just know that going in. Also, I feel I should warn for the thing where this has six points-of-view and they are all written in first person present, which is . . . a choice.

Anyway, this has some amount of intrigue and charm going for it, but I tired of the steep dips in writing quality whenever it came to the romances (and the writing is never good to start with). And also the thing where we get first person POVs of people and everyone is hiding something from the reader, which is hard to pull off and Corland does not have those chops. This is a particular peeve of mine.

I read it, it reads fast and easy, I enjoyed parts of it, but now I have no interest in the sequel, even though it promises to blow the worldbuilding wide open.

Content notes: A lot of violence and murder, references to gory execution methods, child trafficking and child abuse.

Bonded in Death

3/5. Latest of these – if you don’t know what they are by now, I can’t help you. An okay series entry that, as usual recently, took the safe and boring route. Eve is a half step ahead of the killer through the whole book, and the safety of everyone you care about is pretty much a sure thing. Some unsubtle but nice reflections on the ways groups of people bond in adversity, or in hard collective work, both Eve’s police team and extended network and the team of old spies at the heart of the story.

I was more interested in the history dropped here than the case. I’ve always wondered what these “urban wars” were about. The explanation we get here is plausible in parts – a mass movement to ‘burn it all down’ – and very silly in the whole – a worldwide(?) coordinated(?) breakdown of order in urban centers? Which is resolved after years of fighting without apparently really changing the geopolitics of anything? Okay, Nora, carry on.

Content notes: Murder, child abduction/harm.

House of Bane and Blood

2/5. Romantasy about a sort of arranged marriage for reasons between a magic dude and a not magic heiress who both have secrets.

So boring. Also, if you think you know what is up with the heroine and her tattoo and all that within the first 10%, yes, you are correct. I think the thing that offends me most here is actually the sex scene. It employs kink (breathplay) in the most boring way. It just came out of nowhere exactly in the way kink should not. Why were these two people interested in that? And in that moment? What did it express about their developing relationship?

Nothing. The answer is nothing. It came completely out of nowhere and expressed or explained nothing, aside from a sort of obvious shallow thing about (unearned) trust. It’s exactly what good kink writing should not be.

Content notes: A lot of violence, false imprisonment, exploitation.

The Spellshop

3/5. Cozy fantasy about a shut-in librarian who escapes the city convulsed by revolution with a load of illegal magic books, which she takes back to the tiny island of her childhood where she starts a jam shop and begins providing it’s-totally-not-magic “remedies.” Also, there’s a hot boy.

I should just quit on cozies. This one started out quite nicely. It’s all extremely to spec – jam shop (you must have a small business in a cozy, it’s the law), Cute talking plant companion, small town shenanigans. But then it overstayed its welcome by a good 25,000 words, and the romance did nothing for me, and it took a distinct bend to the saccharine. I think I should just go to fanfic when I want the particular satisfaction of a cozy.

Long Live Evil

4/5. A young woman dying of cancer is given the chance to go into her (sort of) favorite dark fantasy series. She arrives in the body of the villainess the night before her execution. But changing that changes all sorts of other things.

This was, on the one hand, delightful and absorbing. It’s obviously very metatextual – our protagonist is forever commenting on genre convention, sexism in fantasy, the shape of stories, etc. And it’s also very funny. There’s an “as foretold” joke in here that made me straight up cackle. Also, I detect some Tamsyn Muir DNA in here, if that’s an inducement.

On the other hand, this did not reward any look beyond the surface. I think it meant to, but I didn’t find anything that stuck to me in all the talk of stories and conventions and villainy. I’m not mad about it, to be clear. I still had a pretty great time. But I did think there could have been more. Maybe the sequel will provide.

Content notes: Zombies, violence, threatened rape, recollections of terminal illness.

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea

3/5. Cozy sapphic fantasy about a queen’s guard who runs away with her powerful mage girlfriend to start a tea/book shop (which is immediately successful, that’s how you know it’s fantasy), also dragon stuff.

This is fine. Cozy fantasy is as particular and personal as romance, and my hit rate is correspondingly low. This one is fine and hits the expected beats (small town politics, renovating to open your business, cute companion animals, you know the drill) but did not distinguish itself in any way. Not even the established relationship, which is normally my jam, but these two did nothing for me.

An Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love

3/5. An extremely silly “historical” romance about two rival ornithologists competing (and accidentally working together) to find a particular magical bird.

I think I’m over India Holton now. This is her fourth book, and to say they are variations on a theme is to vastly understate their repetitiveness. It’s a pleasant enough theme – a cartoonish approach to plot, a romance with little real conflict but hitting the same general notes every time of reaching each other through loneliness, banter, entirely unexplicated worldbuilding, a light narrative voice that says things in the general tone of “he kissed her so quickly the narrative could not come up with a metaphor.” Some playfulness with tropes, but it never amounts to anything, like the inn room they are forced to share that has not one bed, but seven. Cute, but nothing other than cute.

A pleasant diversion, but I’ve had four of them now and I think I’m good.