Listen. If you're going to give me a gay romance with a title like A Boyfriend for Christmas, I'm going to expect a lot of Christmas romance, not a weird meeting of the classes romance between a rich post-college kid and a motorcycle rider who's not POOR but just isn't fancy that barely involves Christmas at all. This book did not do it for me.
Grade: C
Another gay romance! This one starts in England in the mid-18th century, and involves a stable master who gets caught having sex with a man and the son of the family both being sent to Australia for buggary. The son, Colin, never actually had sex with a man but he sacrifices himself so that Patrick won't be hanged in a fairly bizarre initial setup. But of course they both have to get onto the boat to Australia together, and over the sea voyage they fall in love, sort of. They continue to be in love, sort of, while they accompany a young widow to the parcel of land her late husband had purchased for them, and they all work together and Colin and Patrick continue to be sort of in love.
Overall I enjoyed this book, although it suffered quite a bit from conflict between the main couple that was prolonged for no particularly good reason, and "settling Australia" is a complicated story to tell. But it did what a book like it is supposed to do, by and large.
Grade: B
So I FINALLY read this duology and hey guess what: It's great!!! Honestly it is an ideal YA historical urban fantasy with found family and inexplicably young yet hardened by the world thieves. The first book is a perfect getting the gang together of misfits with secret pasts and desires all working together on a big heist that isn't entirely what they or the reader thinks it's going to be, and it ends on a double-cross and then another double-cross and oh no cliffhanger!!!
Kaz is a perfect ringleader, with a fairly ridiculous backstory that fits this sort of story precisely because of how ridiculous it is, and then the other five are all great, with enough unexpected elements to the dynamics that it keeps the standard drama interesting. So basically, if you want to read about teenage thieves in a magical, dark Amsterdam set vaguely during the Dutch Golden Age, do not wait.
Grade: A
This is one of those books where you know everything from the title and the genre that you need to know. Does a m/m romance novel called Kidnapped by the Pirate sound like something you'd enjoy? Then friends, you will like this book.
Nathaniel Bainbridge, whose father is the governor of a small colony in the New World, is on a ship to join his father and be married off when his ship is attacked by pirates. When the pirate captain Hawk learns he's on board, he takes Nathaniel hostage in order to ransom him. Hawk had been a respectable privateer until Nathaniel's father cheated him out of his plundered Spanish fortune and got him branded a pirate. So ransoming his son is both excellent revenge and a perfect One Last Job for him before he quits the pirate life for good.
Of course, this plan is complicated when it becomes clear to Hawk that Nathaniel is, uh, intrigued by him, and they end up having about the most consensual start to a sexual relationship that could happen after, you know, the kidnapping. There's the standard back and forth about whether it means anything, both of them suffer injuries that need to be cared for, we have a bunch of noble self-sacrifice, and the required happy ending.
The book navigates the reality of white Englishmen colonizing islands in the Caribbean about as well as a romance novel like this can. It is also the sort of historical that is determined to have their relationship Known and Accepted by the people they love, which I found a bit much but is also nice in its way. Overall I enjoyed this tremendously, and it was a much needed distraction during this month.
Grade: A
The final book of the Queen's Thief series!! This one had a lot to live up to by following Thick as Thieves, which I (as predicted by everyone I know who had already read it) absolutely loved. Luckily, Return of the Thief managed to be a completely different kind of book that I ALSO adored.
I knew things were going to go well when the narrator of RotT was revealed to be a character who, when mentioned in a fairly off-hand way at the end of TaT, I immediately wanted to know more about. Pheris, the youngest attendant to the High King, is an ideal outsider voice to tell the final chapter of the series, which requires the sort of historian overview narrative that I associate with Guy Gavriel Kay books, in particular his books based on similar conflicts in settings that are clearly directly inspired by the same general regions. Pheris being the physically disabled son of one of the main opposing barons of Attolia also adds to that ideal dynamic, where he's close enough to power to understand it, but isn't considered a player himself.
The war that has been steadily building since the first book finally explodes, and all of the various threads in play weave together in a way that's less dependent on the narrator being unreliable and more in that satisfying way of final puzzle pieces finally coming together. We also finally got canon gays, and I will say no more on that topic, other than it is all extremely nice.
All in all, a lovely end to a series I really, really enjoyed getting to experience over the past couple of months.
Grade: A
We started the new year with a book club book! A book club book about a nonbinary artist named Jebi who somehow finds themselves in the middle of a revolution when really, they just wanted a job.
This story takes place in a speculative version of Japanese-occupied Korea, complete with a mecha dragon and magic derived from art, and secret revolutionaries and unexpected collaborators with the occupation, and no easy answers for anything. But it's also a love story, both between Jebi and the mecha dragon, who they create a telepathic means of communication via painting with inks which have distressing origins, and also between Jebi and a badass duelist. The tone has a lightness to it as well, in large part because Jebi is a delightful kind of unreliable narrator--there's so much of their world that they're clearly just not aware of, or haven't focused on, so they're constantly surprised by events in ways that feel believable, because prior to the narrative of the story, they just accepted the reality of where they lived and did their best not to think about it.
Their older sister did think about it, a lot, and one of the things Jebi discovers through the novel is how much more involved she is in elements of the revolution. I really liked their relationship, because it was a great example of how two people can love each other and care for each other without truly understanding one another, and accept that distance.
It's also an interesting book because Jebi's gender is just a fact, it's not notable one way or another, and there's a poly relationship that isn't necessarily socially acceptable, but for reasons beyond the number of people within it. The author is trans, and Korean-American, and I really, really enjoyed his perspective on this world and on this character.
Grade: A
We made it to 2021! Allegedly, at least. Last year I succeeded in reading not quite as many books as I had intended to, but I still read more than I had since 2016, which given everything that happened last year is a huge win.
This year I am starting out with 101 books on the list. This will increase; I now have a separate google doc where I've been adding books that I want to read but that aren't officially on my to be read list, because I don't own them yet, and also haven't requested them from the library. Even without that, this list will still expand no matter what as a result of book club books and new books by authors who I will always read whatever they publish. However! In addition to having the goal of finishing all 101 of the below books this year, I have a more aggressive one, which is to finish them all within the first six months of the year. This is in part because I feel like I should be able to generally, but also because I expect that the first six months of 2021 will still be fairly locked down for me, and I would like to have goals to focus on that I have some amount of control over. Will I succeed? Who knows, but I'm gonna give it a shot.
I think about 25 or so of the books below have been on every Master List I've created since I started this project in 2016; I would really, really like to read all of those, most of which are at the beginning of this list.
I am also going to be more aggressive this year about putting aside books that are Not For Me after the first hundred pages or so. Reading is an act of pleasure and of learning for me, and if I'm not getting one or the other (or both, of course) then continuing to try to read a book isn't worth my time.
Here is to reading and other nice things in 2021, which already feels like a bit of a tall order, but I'm going to do my best.
