Book 43: Save Me a Seat by Sarah Weeks and Gita Varadarajan

This is a middle grade book I read for my YA book club. It tells the story of the first week of fifth grade for two students in alternating POVs, with each author writing one character's POV. Ravi and his family have just moved to New Jersey from India, and the culture shock is pretty rough. Joe isn't particularly popular due in part to his sensory sensitivity, and the fact that his mom has just been hired as a lunch monitor at his school doesn't help him feel like he can fit in.

I found parts of this book really difficult to read, because Ravi in particular tries so hard to be liked and through no fault of his own gets everything wrong and doesn't understand why Dillon, the big bad bully, is being mean to him. Joe understands perfectly well why Dillon is being mean, but feels powerless to do anything about it for the first half of the book. I don't usually get second-hand embarrassment that easily, but when it comes to kids I find it all but unbearable. Luckily none of the individual moments of embarrassment last too long, and the knowledge that by the end Joe and Ravi will be bound together in friendship helped me make it through.

I also really liked that the back of the book had a glossary for both Ravi and for Joe; the book doesn't assume that all of the readers would know all of the terms in Joe's chapters but not in Ravi's, or that the main audience for this book is white American kids.

Grade: B

Book 42: The Closer You Get by LA Witt

Man, I really enjoyed this book. It tells the story of Kieran, a 27-year-old self-described slut who may have the slightest fear of commitment due to his parents' terrible divorce. His dedication to playing the field shouldn't interfere at all with being something of a one man welcome wagon for Alex, a 21-year-old friend of a friend who is trying to escape his homophobic upbringing and explore the LGBTQ scene in Seattle for the first time. Oh, and did I mention that Alex is a never been kissed virgin?

The developing relationship between Kieran and Alex is told really well, and in a lot of ways the predictability of the story adds to its charm. Kieran behaves badly for a bit while figuring out his shit, but never so terribly that it made me turn on him or totally lose patience, and Alex is a delightful wide-eyed ingenue who grows as a character and stands up to Kieran when he needs to. Kieran's backstory lands a bit too heavily at times, but for the most part it works. Overall it's a very solid contemporary romance, and I will be picking up other titles by this author once I've finished this challenge.

Grade: B

Book 41: Cabin Nights by Ashley John

Late last night and early this morning, I was in desperate need of fictional distraction from the all-too-real world. So I decided to read a romance about an adorable university student on a ski vacation who gets snowed in over Christmas with an intriguing ski bum in a cabin with a fireplace and mulled wine and sex coupons. I make excellent life choices.

This novella definitely scratched the itch I had, and fulfilled my need for distraction by delivering exactly what you would expect from that synopsis. It wasn't the best written version of that story that I've ever read, and there could have been more depth to the attraction between the couple. I also found it really jarring when they had unprotected sex without even a cursory nod to the standard "I've been tested and I'm safe" handwave; it felt both unrealistic and also worrying. But on the whole it did its job.

Grade: B  

Book 40: With or Without Him by Barbara Elsborg

When I had gotten about a sixth of the way through this book, I put it down for a moment and wondered how on earth there could be that much story left. What could possibly fill those remaining pages?

The answer, as it turns out, was more ridiculousness than I could have ever predicted, and sadly not in a good way. The premise of the book is fairly absurd in and of itself: a 21 year old music student named Tyler is involved in a big underground prostitution/group sex/pornography ring because apparently the idea of graduating with huge student loans is so distressing the only answer is to sell his body. He agrees to do an additional 'surprise' gig on the same night as his music recital at his college. Haris is a fabulously wealthy venture capitalist who is a donor to the college's program and attends the recital; he is instantly captivated by Tyler and follows him after the recital. This is fortunate, because Tyler is coerced into doing a BDSM scene that he doesn't want to do and almost has a panic attack before Haris (an experienced former dom) can free him. Obviously the next step is for Haris to offer Tyler a contract for four months of him being Haris's exclusive sexual partner in exchange for twenty thousand pounds. And after that things get REALLY unbelievable.

Truth be told, I was actually enjoying the book through all of the above, but after the second kidnapping and fifth murder attempt and so many secrets from their backstories of pain that I lost count, it all just became so dumb I lost any ability to care about these characters, who never felt particularly real to me but who at least started out as fairly interesting in that sort of romance novel stock character way. It was all too much, and not in a good way.

Grade: D 

Book 39: Captain's Surrender by Alex Beecroft

Naval officers who fall in love! That is the sort of pitch I am always going to be interested in.

Set during the early years of the American Revolution, the focus of this book wasn't quite what I expected. The first third of the book is centered on a terrible captain of a British ship on its way to Bermuda, which is also carrying a wealthy merchant and his ward (in reality his natural daughter). The terrible captain is cruel and sadistic and is eager to catch out his officers for offenses, especially sodomy. This is especially dangerous for Josh, who is now sharing a cabin with a lieutenant named Peter who has just joined the ship. Josh has to navigate concealing his feelings from Peter while also attempting to prevent mutiny, which Peter is narrowly able to avoid while also taking command of the ship as a result of a battle with pirates.

After the terrible captain has been removed from power due to a knife wound inflicted by one of his own crew, Josh and Peter fall in love and are noble and self-sacrificing for each other in ways that are, for the most part, incredibly satisfying. There's an incredibly brave suicide mission, an unlikely rescue, a duel to the death and a wedding, all of which are delightful. The only thing I don't love about the book is the appearance of a Wise Native American who exists more or less only to help one of them realize the true course of his life, but while that's not a trope I'm generally in favor of, it isn't so poorly done that it ruined the rest of the book for me. It brought the overall impression I have of the book down, though.

Grade: B

Book 38: Muscling Through by J.L. Merrow

Muscling Through starts with a classic romance novel set up: a pretty professor of Art History runs into a scary-looking muscle man in an alley, but instead of finding trouble, he finds love. Al, the muscle man, isn't exactly a gentle giant (he had a tendency to get involved in some bar brawls as a bouncer, which is why he took a job as a punter instead to make his mum happy), but he isn't the homophobic brute Lawrence (or Larry, as Al calls him) was initially afraid of.

The two of them embark on a love affair that is refreshingly drama-free, for one that cuts as far across social and class lines as it does. And for anyone who enjoys some nice size kink, the sex is fantastic--some of the best contemporary sex scenes I've read in a while.

I just really enjoyed this book! It's more of a novella than a novel, but given what the story is about I think it's the perfect length. There's a tiny bit of conflict in the middle, but it's dealt with quickly, and to make the book longer I fear most authors would have turned it into a huge crisis, rather than something that could be resolved once Larry and Al actually had a real conversation. The book is from Al's POV, and I loved the voice; it veered slightly too close to mockery occasionally when Al didn't understand something that both Larry and presumably the reader would, but on the whole I thought it really nailed that balance. And it was always perfectly obvious why Al and Larry were initially attracted to each other, and how their relationship bloomed into something deeper than sex, in a way that isn't always clear in short romances. It was exactly what I wanted from this kind of story.

Grade: A

Book 37: A Treasure of Gold by Piper Huguley

The third book in the series that started with A Virtuous Ruby and continued with A Most Precious Pearl, A Treasure of Gold takes place entirely in Pittsburgh. Nettie, the middle sister of five, has moved to Pittsburgh to stay with her older sisters after spending a couple of years touring the country leading revival meetings. After the death of one of the ministers, she is trying to find a new life in Pittsburgh, which starts on a dramatic note when she saves the life of a numbers man who was shot in a nearby alley.

Jay lost his first wife to a wasting disease and is raising his daughter Goldie on his own. Nettie's family thinks Jay is a gangster who runs a gambling hall, but he's also something of an unofficial bank for black people who are unable to get loans or support from commercial banks. Nettie becomes his daughter's nanny and runs a church school for black children when their school closes for weeks at a time due to overcrowding.

Much like in A Most Precious Pearl, I found the plot devices that kept Nettie and Jay apart to be more frustrating than compelling, but the overall setting and world of the book was really interesting. All three books have had detailed bibliographies that I will definitely be checking out once I've completed this challenge, but on the whole the story itself didn't do a whole lot for me.

Grade: C

Book 36: A Most Precious Pearl by Piper Huguley

This book is the first sequel to A Virtuous Ruby and focuses on Ruby's younger sister Mags and Asa, a journalist who fought in the Great War and lost his leg. Asa knows Ruby and her husband Adam in Pittsburgh, and Ruby sends him down to Georgia to report on the lynchings taking place there at an escalating pace. Ruby also wants him to bring her younger sister back with him to Pittsburgh, both to help her with the birth of her baby and also to become his wife.

Much like in A Virtuous Ruby, Mags and Asa are immediately attracted to one another but certain they cannot be together, Asa because he thinks himself unfit to be any woman's husband due to his injury and Mags because of how dark her skin is. The setting and the issues involved are once again fascinating, as the story deals with Mags losing her place as a manager in the mill because of the men returning back from the war, and Asa detailing the brutal means the white people in power use to subjugate black mill workers. But the setting and history of the time is more affecting than the romance at the center of the book, which doesn't have enough genuine conflict there to sustain the entire novel.

Grade: C

Book 35: A Virtuous Ruby by Piper Huguley

This is exactly the sort of book this project was intended for. I bought this book (and two sequels) during a publisher sale because they sounded interesting and different from my usual fare. And it was definitely different, especially in that I didn't realize when I bought it that it's inspirational romance. But I'm also really glad I read it, and without a project like this it likely would have sat on my e-reader unread for years.

The story focuses on the lives of a black family living in Georgia in 1915. The titular Ruby is the eldest daughter of the family, and her life (and the life of her whole family) was upended when she was raped and bore a son as a result of her attack. The rape is one of many disturbing elements of the story, which also involves lynchings, chain gangs and union breaking in the big mill of the town. It's not a easy story, but it also manages to find hope, and gives characters a path to a better life while not glossing over just how terrible life was for black people in the South fifty years post-slavery.

Ruby has just begun to reassert herself in public life six months after the birth of her son when a new doctor named Adam arrives in town. He's black but passed for white in order to attend medical school in Minnesota, and he's the son of the owner of the mill and a maid. Adam and Ruby butt heads at first but fall in love as they realize they can do more for themselves and other black people if they work together.

I really enjoyed the writing and the characters in this book. Ruby and her family were all incredibly vibrant, and Adam's outsider point of view was just the right level of naive. I'm looking forward to reading the next books in this series focusing on additional members of Ruby's family.

Grade: B

Book 34: Lone Star by Josh Lanyon

This novella has basically all of the ingredients of a book I would love, but somehow it didn't really come together for me.

It's a classic setup: 13 years after Mitch left Texas to pursue dance, he returns to his small hometown to deal with his late father's estate and runs into his high school love again. Mitch is reeling from his dancer boyfriend cheating on him and when he sees Web again, all of his old feelings come rushing back. Also, it's Christmas!

I don't know. It was very readable, and the setting and their history together and Mitch's current life as a dancer were all detailed and specific and fit. But I never quite cared. It felt like a paint by the numbers story to me, because the book didn't sell me on the connection between Web and Mitch. It was one part "oh god please just talk to each other" and another part "wait but how exactly would their future relationship work if Mitch is still a professional dancer," full of problems that were simultaneously too easy to solve and also far too big to be resolved in one conversation. It didn't hit the mark, for me.

Grade: C

Book 33: Ten Years in the Tub by Nick Hornby

This book is actually why I started this entire project. Not just because I wanted to finally get around to finishing this book, but because the book itself is a similar sort of note keeping and examination of what we read and why. It's a collection of monthly articles the author wrote for The Believer over the course of ten years. At the top of every article are two columns: Books Purchased and Books Read. The two lists are never, ever the same.

I first started reading Nick Hornby in college, about 16 years ago. He's one of those authors whose work has been bizarrely influential on my life; his book Fever Pitch isn't the reason I'm a soccer fan, but it is the reason I'm an Arsenal supporter, despite having never been to North London and having no intrinsic connection to the club. But he writes about his fandom, and how he loves his club, and music, and books, in such a way that it felt like coming home for me, and I imprinted on his team like a duckling on its mother.

We don't have entirely the same taste in books; his reading lists have much more literary fiction and much less genre than mine do, and he has more of an appetite for distressing nonfiction books than I do currently. But we do desire the same things from books: a great story, and characters who feel real, and plot twists that actually surprise us. He believes that reading should be pleasurable, even when it's challenging, and that we tell and consume stories both because they're important and because they're fun.

He also writes about writing in a way that I find deeply reassuring and inspiring. There's a generosity in how he approaches reading that makes me want to be a better reader and a better writer, and to trust myself and why I want to write. I read this book over the course of about two months, a couple of articles (each 6-8 pages long) a night three or four times a week, and it was a deeply comforting and steadying experience. For lack of a better way of putting it, his writing makes me feel known.

Grade: A

Book 32: Queens' Play by Dorothy Dunnett

This is the second book in the Lymond Chronicles and is part of the "Read my favorite books!" exchange I'm doing with Harriet. It is very much a second book in a series, as it transitions from establishing who these characters are and why should we care about them into the longer arc of the series. And apparently if you're Dunnett and writing a book like this, that means a whole lot of SHENANIGANS. Shenanigans involving shipwrecks and men in disguise and elephants and rooftop chases and a cheetah in a hare hunt and also a nefarious plot to kill little Mary, Queen of Scots (one of the many titular queens). It is bonkers and even during the first half when the reader already knows there is a would-be royal assassin out there, in many ways the book still feels much lighter than Game of Kings. And then suddenly, at the end of part two, everything gets SUPER REAL.

Structurally and thematically the book reminded me a lot of Henry IV, with Francis Crawford as the book's Prince Hal. But while Prince Hal has a very clear role to play as the King's heir that he is consciously rejecting, the choices Francis makes are inspired by a lack of clarity. Due to the birth of his nephew, he is no longer his brother's heir, and what he does next with his life is up in the air. So he attempts to ignore and deny that he's extraordinary, and handles situations via subterfuge rather than publicly acknowledging how remarkable he is. Part of this is out of necessity, given how complicated both the French Court and the relationships between and among France, Ireland, Scotland and England are, but part of it is because Francis wants to be able to treat it all like a game. At the end of Henry IV, Prince Hal has thrown off his disguise in order to step into his position of power, but Francis has it ripped away, as he realizes (and is lovingly but forcefully told) that he needs to grow up, and take ownership of his life, and the influence he has on others. It's a gut punch, but one that is necessary for him.

I don't think Queens' Play is as good a single volume read as Game of Kings is, but the distance Francis travels over the course of the book is hugely important, and is clearly setting up the rest of the series. Plus some of the set pieces in this book are truly astonishing, and there are many moments of sheer perfection. And the ending makes me incredibly excited to see how Francis takes on the mantle he has finally picked up.

Grade: A

Book 31: The Siren and the Sword by Cecilia Tan

The setup for this book is basically a Hogwarts-esque secret university hidden within the structure of Harvard. Kyle is a mundane and has no idea when he goes for a scholarship interview at Harvard that he's actually been accepted at Veritas. Suddenly he's in a whole world he didn't know existed and stop me if you've heard this before.

The main problem I had with this book isn't that this concept has been done before (and not just by Harry Potter), it's that the entire thing is basically written in shorthand. We are told that conversations occur in which Kyle learns about various aspects of the university or the particular magical world this book inhabits, but the reader is never actually informed of those facts. As a result the worldbuilding feels painfully thin and superficial; there's plenty of detail about Harvard and Cambridge, but that's not actually what the reader needs. This superficiality extends to Kyle's relationships with other students, which is a major problem since from about the first chapter on we're told that he wants to magically bond with his girlfriend Jess, whom he starts dating immediately. The source of their attraction and interest in each other is never clearly shown.

There's some interesting stuff in here about how Kyle's magic works via poetry, and in general the variation on how people's magical power manifests is intriguing. And I imagine that part of the appeal of writing about college students is including sex magic. But the characters and relationships are weak enough that it's hard to know why I should care, even about that.

Grade: C

Book 30: The Salisbury Key by Harper Fox

I finished reading this yesterday and I still don't really know how to grapple with it.

The book starts out with Daniel Logan, a 25 year old grad student, on an archaeological field trip with his advisor, 55 year old Jason Ross, whom Daniel is in love with. Within the space of the prologue the two of them have had sex and gotten together as a couple. The first chapter is three years later to the day, on their anniversary, and Jason is behaving a bit oddly, asking Daniel to leave their home and university jobs and run off together. The following morning, Daniel finds Jason's body after Jason has committed suicide, leaving no note.

The rest of the book is a cross between a mystery and a more typical romance, except that most romances don't start with the traumatic death of the main character's partner. Daniel finds both the answer behind Jason's suicide and love again with the aid of Lt. Rayne, who helps Daniel at an excavation site that contains the key. And then things get really wacky.

This book is baffling and I have no idea how it worked, but on the other hand it kept me reading and invested all the way until the end. The answers and resolutions and plot twists are totally absurd, and it's another book in which the two main characters are so isolated in their lives it defies belief, but I still really enjoyed reading it. I don't know if I'd call it a good book, but I also couldn't stop reading it. I don't know. It's a mystery.

Grade: B

Book 29: Scrap Metal by Harper Fox

This book is basically everything I could have wanted from a contemporary m/m romance about a lonely Scottish sheep farmer recovering from loss and finding love again in the form of a mysterious late night trespasser.

Years after Nichol Seacliff escaped his family's sheep farm on the Isle of Arran for university and a career as a translator, he returns to help his grandfather run the farm after the death of his mother and brother in a bus crash. Still numb from grief, it takes a young man breaking into the barn one night to breathe some life back into him. Cameron stays on the farm to help Nichol and his grandfather through the lambing season, but he has secrets in his own past, of course.

This is the second book by this author I've read, and I find her style to be so incredibly readable. This story does basically exactly what you would think a book with this premise would do, but there's a depth to her writing that doesn't always go along with these stories. I can get frustrated with romance novels that focus on two people who seem to exist totally independent of any other real people in their lives except for each other, but in this case it works exactly the way I want it to. It's  not revolutionary, and some of the plot twists and revelations go pretty hard on the melodrama, but it delivers just the way a book like this should. I mean it's gay sheep farmers finding love. I am in.

Grade: A 

Book 28: Briar Rose by Jane Yolen

I've owned this book for so long I have no memory of when I bought this. When I finally read it this week, I was amazed that I hadn't read it when it came out in 1992, because I was both the right age for it and exactly the sort of 12-year-old who would have read it. But I know I didn't, because this story would have stayed with me if I had.

Briar Rose is a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale through the horrors of the Holocaust and the hope, however faint, found through survival. The main character is Becca, whose beloved grandmother dies and leaves behind the mystery of her past for her granddaughter to solve.

The writing and pacing and overall structure of this book is masterful. There is not a word or a moment out of place, the entire story rolling out with the sort of inevitability that reflects its meticulous crafting. The ending is beautiful and contains just the right amount of joy before the Author's Note smashes your heart in a way I can't recall any Author's Note ever having done before. It is a beautiful, haunting book. One I will not forget.

Grade: A

Book 27: Almost Like Being in Love by Steve Kluger

This is a gay novel that basically felt like it was written for me. It's a story about two guys who fall in love at their East Coast boarding school in 1978 and then have one perfect summer together in New York City before they go to colleges on opposite coasts and lose track of each other. Fast forward to 1998 and Travis, the West Coast neurotic history professor, suddenly realizes that he's been searching fruitlessly for another Craig his entire adult life, and maybe it's time to go find him. But can he find Brigadoon again?

The novel is an epistolary for the late twentieth century, which means journal entries and class notes and school assignments in 1978 and then law firm memos and emails and formal letters in 1998. It's also full of baseball and musical theater and even Alexander Hamilton references and plot lines, which also made me feel like there was a secret code running through the book that only I (and people like me) could decipher. That feeling went beyond the topical references, though. It's also a book that feels incredibly grounded in American gay culture over those twenty years, and there's a richness and authenticity to it that is often lacking in a lot of the m/m romance novels I read. I'm not even sure I would characterize it as a romance novel, even though it has the required happily ever after (although not in exactly the way I was expecting). It's about finding your first love again, but it's also about being some of the survivors of the AIDS epidemic, and living with that, and figuring out what matters most in your life after that.

My only real criticism of the book is that Craig ends up feeling a bit more fleshed out and real than Travis does, and there are a few moments when the conceit behind the format of the novel almost breaks. But on the whole I loved finding Brigadoon again with both of them.

Grade: B

Book 26: Nothing Like Paris by Amy Jo Cousins

This is the second book in the series that begins with Off Campus, and as with that book, I liked the idea of this story more than the execution of it. It’s the story of a college kid named Jack who has to return to his small hometown in disgrace after his college experience doesn’t go quite as he expected it to. Once home again, he has to confront the high school boyfriend who he left behind three years earlier.

This story felt like it either needed to be significantly shorter and less complicated, or a legitimate slow burn as they rediscovered who they were and fell in love again while finally dealing with their respective family problems that had been impossible during high school. Instead, the fights they had didn’t quite seem to match up with their history, and as a result the resolution also feels a bit flat. 

I did really like Jack's high school boyfriend Miguel, and the depiction of his family. But on the whole this was the sort of book that I ended up rewriting it in my head as I read it in order to make it land emotionally the way I wanted it to. So much potential, but not quite a winner for me. 

Grade: C