Book 1: In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren

Yes, it is January and yes, I am still making my way through my Christmas books from 2023! This is a deeply mediocre romance novel about a woman who goes through a groundhog day of her holiday vacation with her immediate family and the family friends they've done Christmas with her entire life. But this might be the final year at the vacation home they all go to, and she hooked up with the wrong pseudo-cousin who's not actually a cousin, and of course she's stuck in a dead-end job and is afraid to tell anyone what's happening! So she gets a million chances to fix it all, and finally does. This wouldn't have been good no matter what, but it especially suffers in comparison with the Hallmark Hanukkah groundhog day movie that came out in 2023, Round and Round, which is legitimately great and shows how a time loop really should be done. 

Grade: C

Book 17: The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian

I kept reading the first book in this series because I had a feeling I would like the sequel better, and I was correct! 

This book overlaps with various parts of The Queer Principles of Kit Webb and benefits because it has much less setup to spend pages and pages on. Rob is blackmailing Marian because her rich duke husband was already married when he married her, which Rob knows because his mother is in fact his actual wife. For some reason (can't imagine what!) the two of them continue to exchange letters even while they should be enemies, and when she needs help after she kills her husband during what was supposed to be a robbery, the two of them escape from London together. 

If that setup sounds a bit convoluted: it is! It's an odd series, but the two of them have great chemistry together, and while the novels can't really decide whether they want to be about a couple of 18th century aristocrats completely throwing away their wealth or if it's something in the middle, it ends in a way that feels less half-baked than the first one. I don't know if the first one is worth getting through to make it to this one, but I felt satisfied by this conclusion. 

Grade: B   

Book 9: Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman

Man, this book should be a homerun for me. It's a Notting Hill famous/not-famous romance between a writer and the movie star she met when she was young and is now interviewing again, and the narrative goes back and forth between the present and ten years prior, when they first met. It should be light and snappy with an intriguing chronological structure that conceals what actually transpired between the two of them all those years ago, and instead it's just exactly the wrong kind of fantasy for me. The actor is getting ready to play James Bond for the first time, and that's fraught for a variety of reasons, and it's one of those things where I just know a bit too much about the reality of this topic to lose myself in this fictionalized version of it, and meh. I picked this up because it was recommended on a podcast I listen to, and I am honestly a bit perplexed. 

Grade: C 

Book 84: A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong by Cecilia Grant

 Well, it's not gay, and it's not contemporary, but this was the Christmas romance novel I had been hoping for!!!!

This is an absolutely charming Regency historical romance novella that's the perfect length for its story, and so satisfying even while you of course know exactly how it has to resolve. In the days leading up to Christmas, Andrew Blackshear has gone to Lord Sharp in order to obtain a falcon. But he encounters his daughter Lucy instead, who is a free spirit and desperate to be a part of society beyond her father's home. She manipulates him into agreeing to take her to the house party she was invited to for Christmas, but then she drops off her maid, so she's unchaperoned, and then their carriage wheel breaks and they have an accident, so they have to rely on the kindness of a farmhouse in order to survive, which means posing as a married couple to save Lucy's reputation!

There is, of course, only one bed, and Lucy is the one who doesn't fear losing her reputation and Andrew is so moral and good, and you just like both of them so much and the situation resolves in exactly the amount of time you want it to. A delight, start to finish. 

Grade: A

Book 65: A Duke in Disguise by Cat Sebastian

 This book was...fine? It's a historical with a female publisher, her brother who keeps writing seditious papers, and her oldest friend who she's clearly interested in, and who's clearly interested in her, but they can't let themselves to be together, for...reasons? And then they send her brother away to America so he'll be safe, and the oldest friend finds out he's not a bastard but rather he's a secret Duke, and now they really can't be together? Except there's never a really compelling explanation for why any of the wrenches thrown into their relationship are actual problems, and so as a result the actual relationship itself has very little tension, and I don't know. Not my favorite. 

Grade: C

Book 63: Gilded Cage by KJ Charles

 What a delightful read! I had such a nice time reading this book, and it was exactly the sort of distraction I wanted from a het historical romance novel. I had also really enjoyed the first book in the Lilywhite Boys series, and this second book about a couple who had been forced apart by families and a pregnancy and understandable misimpressions and all that just really worked for me--I wanted to find out what had happened while also really enjoying the current era romance as well. The ending tied up a bit too easily in some ways for me, but I didn't really mind that, and overall I really enjoyed this book. 

Grade: A

Book 25: Wicked Intentions by Elizabeth Hoyt

I read this book two weeks ago and have already forgotten most of it, other than that it is the sort of historical romance novel that is surely perfect for someone but isn't for me. There's a rich guy with unusual sexual appetites who everyone thinks is bad but really he's just kinky and sad because his mother didn't show him enough love, and there's a widow with a secret who's trying to save all of the orphans from the slums of London, plus the deaths of a bunch of prostitutes and overprotective older brothers and a sister who sacrifices her own virtue to save her ungrateful husband, like you do. So there's obviously a lot of stuff that happens in this book, but there's very little heart or real human behavior, and I just don't like straight romance well enough these days to get past all of the nonsense, sorry.

Grade: C

Book 16: Talk Sweetly to Me by Courtney Milan

Another excellent read! Often when I read a novella in a romance series I end up wishing it was a full length novel, but this was that perfect kind which had a story arc that didn't require any more time than it got.

Rose Sweetly is the younger daughter of a black shop owner in London, who moves in with her pregnant older sister Patricia to help while her husband is away. While in Greenwich, she has the opportunity to be a computer (i.e., mathematician) for an astronomer, work she deeply loves. But Stephen Shaughnessy, a known rake and writer, is also in Greenwich, and has developed quite an interest in Rose, even arranging for lessons with Rose to ostensibly learn about astronomy for a character he's writing, but really he just wants to spend time with her.

Part of what I liked so much about this book being a novella rather than a full length novel is that at its heart there's only one major conflict or question, once it's established that Stephen is actually serious in his intentions toward Rose (which he has to be in order to be a likable character). The story comes down to whether Stephen and Rose are willing to deal with the realities of being in a mixed race marriage, and more specifically whether Stephen is ready to be the husband of a black woman and all that will entail, even for an Irishman who is used to poor treatment from the English. It's not a conflict that can reasonably withstand too much equivocation, because either it will be deemed worth it or not, and nothing within the timeframe of the novel can change outside of their relationship to shift their decision. The way it's handled neither minimizes the realities to the point of handwaving, nor does it make you think it's a relationship that's doomed to failure. And the progression of their attraction and love is really lovely, with just the right small and big moments. Milan writes historical romances so well it feels effortless and it makes me wish every book read so well.

Grade: A

    

Book 6: Abroad by Liz Jacobs (Book 2)

Note: I know the author of this book socially.

This is the continuation of Abroad Part I, which you have to read first in order to have any understanding of what's happening. If the first book was about Nick internally coming to terms with who he is and what he wants, the second book is all about him discovering how to be that person out in the world, both within a relationship and also as an individual. That journey is paralleled by Izzy's own exploration of how to express what's going on in her life, and her need to create something out of her past in order to grow into the future. And then there's Dex, who has to balance his own needs and insecurities with caring for someone whose struggles are similar to his own but also wildly different. There's a lot going on, in other words!

The first part of the book feels like the reader finally gets to exhale for a bit after all of the drama in Part I, at least when it comes to Dex and Nick. After Part I set up the attraction and interest between the two of them so beautifully, Part II pays that off right off the bat, both in terms of the sex and also the emotional intimacy between them. It just feels a bit like a blanket fort in the middle of all the craziness, which I liked a lot. It mirrored how a lot of young queer relationships can feel: as long as it's just the two of you in your own secret space, it's not so scary. But it can be much harder out in the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, Izzy is having a bit of a disaster of her own, trying to figure out what to do about both her friendship with Nat and her own sense of her identity. I have to admit, I was genuinely surprised by where this plotline went! I was definitely expecting Izzy to realize that she had always felt something more for Nat than she had recognized, because she hadn't known she could feel that way about women. That is a thing that happens quite frequently, both in fiction and in life, but this story went in a slightly more painful and, because of that pain, more believable direction. Nat hadn't been the thunderbolt for Izzy's realization because she genuinely was separate from it, and as neat and tidy as it would have been for the two of them to end up together, it wouldn't actually have felt right. At one point in the novel Izzy reflects on how much she hates feeling feelings and how much easier it would be if we didn't have to, and I definitely understand and empathize with that. Izzy still gets a romance, which I won't reveal for fear of spoilers, and I really liked how her entire journey was handled.

The rest of the book deals with how these two sets of characters manage to get out of their own heads and into the world, and the pitfalls they face. Dex and Nick finally get on the same page with each other, but they're in wildly different places in terms of how they are in the world as gay men. It's the classic university relationship that on the one hand is moving far too quickly, given the circumstances, and on the other hand, that's how these things happen sometimes. But being in a relationship doesn't automatically ease outside anxieties, and that's especially true when Nick's reluctance to come out to his mom feels to Dex like a commentary about how seriously Nick feels about him and their relationship. I found myself frustrated with Dex during this section, both because neither one of them were actually communicating with each other (in an all-too-realistic way) and also because while six or eight months of emotional entanglement feels like a long time when you're twenty, in the context of coming out it's not very long at all. But Dex's fears were also understandable, and that's part of what makes all of this a struggle for people--queer people aren't just dealing with their own coming out experiences, but often the experiences of their partners as well, who may have radically different circumstances to deal with.

I really liked how the story ended, too. It wasn't too neat and easy, but it was still the happily ever after that you want from this kind of romance, with a nod to the specific challenges that they would have. It's the happy ending you want for them that sometimes happens in real life, but doesn't always. I think these novels toe the line beautifully in telling a realistic-feeling story with the conclusions we don't always get in reality, which is the perfect balance in a contemporary queer romance, for me. It never feels too easy for them, but it also never feels hopeless, because it's not. There's a future for them all.

Grade: A 

Book 47: The Suffragette Scandal by Courtney Milan

This book is actually the final book in The Brothers Sinister series, which The Governess Affair and The Duchess War start. While I am definitely planning on going back and reading the books that go between The Duchess War and this one once I've finished this project, I didn't have any trouble following the plot or the emotional arc. I also think that there are a number of parallels between the two books that were probably more heightened by reading them back to back, which I enjoyed.

The character with the secret past in this book is Edward Clark, who was once Edward Delacey, the next Viscount Claridge. He was disavowed by his family during the Seige of Strasbourg and presumed dead, and now his younger brother James is set to inherit the title. Edward has no interest in claiming the title, but he comes back to England to prevent his brother from causing problems for Edward's childhood friend. Those efforts throw him into the path of Federica Marshall, the titular suffragette.

Federica, or Free as she's known, is an absolute delight of a character. She runs a newspaper that's for women and by women, and she is completely unintimidated by a scoundrel like Edward. That doesn't means she's not attracted to him, and her willingness to acknowledge such attraction completely disarms Edward. She is so fantastic, a character who is grounded in the realities of 19th century England while demonstrating exactly what women were doing to agitate and win the vote and the painstaking effort involved in achieving incremental victories. It isn't a fantasy, but it is inspirational, and doggedly optimistic, and I just loved her and their relationship so much. She made me want to go out there and do something and make some noise. A wonderful read, start to finish.

Grade: A

Book 46: The Duchess War by Courtney Milan

This book picks up many years after the end of The Governess Affair, the novella that is essentially a prequel to this entire series. It focuses on Robert, the Duke of Clermont, who is the son of the villain in The Governess Affair (and the half-brother of Oliver, Hugo and Serena's son). Robert is a duke who wishes to use his power and privilege to right the wrongs his father had committed while drawing as little attention to himself as he can. This brings him to Leicester, where he meets Minnie, a young woman who also wishes to blend in after a childhood that was anything but average. She discovers one of his secrets, and continues to outwit him while he falls more and more in love with her.

Honestly, a simple description of the main characters and the plot doesn't do the story justice at all, not least because I don't actually want to mention too many of the secrets because my god was I not expecting any of those twists. As Robert says when Minnie reveals the first of multiple secrets about her scandalous past, "I was...definitely not going to guess that." Minnie and Robert are both wonderful, the obstacles to their relationship are genuine problems and the route they take to overcome those obstacles feels plausible and right, and they're surrounded by fantastic supporting characters. They are both Good People in ways that make them exceptional to their time but not anachronistic, a character type which Milan writes extremely well. And the sexual tension and subsequent sex scenes are incredible.  

What a delightful book. I am so charmed by everything about it! SO CHARMED. Milan is writing the gold standard of historical romances these days.

Grade: A 

Book 45: The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan

So I got a quarter of the way through this novella before I had that light bulb moment of ...wait I've already read this, haven't I. And indeed, while I confess that I didn't remember the details of the story as well as I would have expected to, given that I had to have read it fairly recently, this definitely was a re-read rather than a first time read. Which is bugging me a BIT since it goes against the premise of this challenge, but oh well.

It was also a good thing that I read it before starting the next book in this series, because this novella starts off the universe with a nice chunk of backstory that will clearly inform the rest of the books. Serena Barton is a governess who is pregnant by the Duke of Clermont. Hugo Marshall is the Duke's man, the notorious Wolf of Clermont, who is in charge of handling such sticky situations on behalf of the Duke. Hugo finds Serena hard to treat as just another faceless problem to be solved, however, and the two of them fall in love. The attraction between the two of them is delightful, and the sex scene is simply fantastic, one of the best in historical m/f romance I've read in quite some time. And it sets the scene for the main series of the books so well. I can't wait to read the next one this weekend.

Grade: A