lightreads | Entries tagged with romance

.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.

A Letter to the Luminous Deep

4/5. Epistolary novel set on a water world where two people begin writing to each other to process their grief about the mutual loss of their siblings, who it turns out had developed their own epistolary relationship, but investigating that raises more questions than it answers.

Lovely. It’s odd to call a book so concerned with grief "cozy," but I think it’s true. This is a book about a strange, dreamy world and some strange, dreamy happenings, and academic politics, and mental illness. But the heart of it is friendship and romance, held in equal importance here. There are two nested relationships – a slow, sweet romance between two very lonely people (at least one of whom is disabled and on the ase spectrum, btw) – and the other a deep and abiding friendship that draws two families together as they try to navigate loss. It’s the sort of book that will make you sigh quietly to yourself when you put it down.

I will say, since I always comment on epistolary, that this is done pretty well. There are a few contrivances, as there always are, but I forgave them easily. E.g., the book includes a written transcript of an important conversation upon first meeting your dear pen pal, because the two characters sat in silence next to each other and wrote notes. But the reason for that was so integral to them – their shyness, one’s mental illness, the circumstances – that it worked. I love epistolary so much, but man, it is not easy.

Content notes: Grief, mental illness – agoraphobia, anxiety, maybe OCD.

Lady Eve's Last Con

N.b.: I know the author a smidge.

3/5. A con artist sets out to trick a young heir into marriage because he wronged her sister, but oh no help his sister is unfairly hot. Also, it’s science fiction but with shades of historical drama of manners.

This poor book. I did my best, but my reading of it was interrupted by long-awaited or otherwise urgent library holds arriving no less than five times. It suffered a lot for that. It’s a cute, sweet, occasionally sexy sapphic tale of hot girls and family problems and being a class outsider and being good to your siblings except what does that mean, again? This probably would have had more emotional traction with me if I’d read it at all coherently; as it is, I found it fun but a little insubstantial. Not like that’s necessarily a bad thing.

The Blighted Stars

3/5. Start of a scifi trilogy set in a world where you can print yourself a new body, but there’s all sorts of fucky quantum entanglement stuff that happens with your memories/experiences across interstellar distances. Also, the somewhat estranged son of one of the powerful merchant families keeping humanity afloat ends up stranded on a planet infested with alien fungus with a terrorist posing as his body guard.

A lot of pieces here that I’m into, but it didn’t gel. There’s lots of chewy emotional implications of the worldbuilding here, but the whole story – corporate sabotage stuff and alien intelligence stuff and family drama stuff and all of it – stands or falls on how hard you buy into the central romance. I wanted to be into it – he’s a nerdy transboy who thinks he’s unpacked his privilege but he’s wrong, she’s a traumatized revolutionary driven to violence. But I missed some vital step and, also, the writing is pretty clumsy when it comes to their attraction. They end up mentally gushing over each other, and it’s one of those situations where I kind of suck my breath between my teeth, because infatuation is like that, yes, but come on, at a certain point, you’re just failing to see each other clearly at all for the complex, flawed people you are.

Anyway, read if you like creepy alien fungus stuff and family politics stuff and fucky multiple bodies stuff, but this just didn’t quite get over the hump for me.

Content notes: Violence, imprisonment, references to torture, lots of fungus and alien mind control stuff.

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands

2/5. More about the professor studying the fae and her secretly fae colleague/love interest.

Yeah, I’m out. This has its charms – our protagonist not understanding how to people, for one. But I cannot believe I’m the only person to have a huge problem with the hero here, who is an academic fraud. He admits it, other people catch him at it, and these books, down to their core, do not care. They might even think it’s cute. It doesn’t even make sense – surely our protagonist should care, given he is essentially polluting the academic body of work that she has dedicated her life to by introducing all sorts of falsified information. And yet she doesn’t, at all, and I just can’t fuck with any of that.

A curious Beginning plus seven more books

3/5. Series of historical mysteries with a “slow burn” het romance subplot, featuring a naturalist and her partner in many senses.

I’m about to complain about these, but I feel in fairness I should also point out that I did read eight of them. They’re comfortable popcorn books with a growing cast of colorful secondary characters and a variety of mystery/suspense plots.

But they’re also pretty annoying. Veronica, our protagonist, has a case of not-like-other-girls-itis so bad, it really ought to be fatal. These books are just heavily overclocked in general; Raybourn has zero chill about anything ever, including some very delicate emotional things. Also, this is one of those “slow burns” that I don’t think earns the name. Sure it takes them like five books to hook up, but that’s more annoying than tantalizing when they got fake married and started having whoops-we-almost-kissed moments in the first hundred pages of the first book. It’s not slow burn, it’s just here’s a fire but we’re not going to do anything about it for a series of more or less stupid or arbitrary reasons for an annoying length of time.

I did read eight, though. Fun, quippy, frequently annoying, generally entertaining.

Content notes: Murder of all sorts, a lot of stuff that is blurring together now

Slippery Creatures, The Sugared Game, Subtle Blood

4/5. Trilogy of 1920’s queer romances in which a soldier come home from the trenches has his quiet life of bookshop ownership disturbed by a plot involving national security, which brings him into the orbit of a high-strung socialist (or is he?) aristocrat.

These had an uphill climb with me. I picked them up because I really wanted to be reading Freya Marske’s latest, but my library hold wasn’t in yet so this was the next closest queer historical (very different otherwise, obviously). So I was disgruntled about that, and then I was put off by the second hero, who is the self-hating type who tries to make sure that he makes everyone hate him as much as he hates himself, oh but it’s all entirely necessary self-sabotage, don’t you know. Blech.

But this is KJ Charles, so wouldn’t you know that by the second book, I was all in on this relationship. It is hard work for both of them, which is one of my favorite things. And they both change in painful, believable ways. And she made a very good choice not alternating POVs here – watching the other hero slowly change his life from the outside is beautiful, having to hear all his crap from the inside would have been intolerable.

Good, chewy, sexy, spyful.

Content notes: Past self-harm, familial abuse, violence.