Book 10: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older

The sequel to The Mimicking of Known Successes, this book picks up where that one left off, with our intrepid duo stumbling on a new mystery to solve on the rings of Jupiter! This one is in many ways an examination of why people within a society will contrive to create an "imposition of unnecessary obstacles" simply because they need to see themselves as living off the land or being good enough or having the ability to pull up those bootstraps that others can't, etc. And for obvious reasons, I found that pretty topical! Don't break things that are working but flawed because you're bored or because they're not perfect!!! Ahem. 

I will say that the relationship at the core of these books still isn't exactly my jam - there's too much hesitation and doubt for me, without an actual issue to give their relationship any real conflict. It's not the scifi novella series I'd most recommend, but if space colonization is your thing, it's fun!

Grade: B

Book 6: The Christmas Swap by Talia Samuels

This is almost a really sweet and satisfying Christmas romance novel before it kind of falls apart in the end, sadly. Margot and her girlfriend break up right before the holidays, so when one of her clients asks her to be his fake girlfriend at his rich parents' home for Christmas, she says yes. All goes well until she meets Ben's hot gay sister Ellie, oh no! Ellie thinks she's a gold digger but is also drawn to her, of course. 

I thought this novel was going to avoid most of the worst pitfalls of this genre when Ben and Margot confess that they're faking it at about the midway point, long before Margot and Ellie actually kiss, but then the final conflict and resolution is so both overdone and underbaked that the whole thing falls flat. Not mad I read it, but it could have been much better with a bit more work, for me. 

Grade: C 

Book 4: It's a Fabulous Life by Kelly Farmer

As is probably obvious from the title of this Christmas romance novel, it's a take on It's a Wonderful Life. But instead of an actual angel, we have a group of drag queens who need to get the wings of their costume, and the small town has a sad lesbian who never got to leave the town to go out and experience the world because her dad died her senior year of high school, and the love interest is the girl who got away from high school who's just moved back. 

There's a lot in this that's cute, but the central conceit really falls apart in this version of it. We're supposed to think that by the end Bailey George (yes, really) will of course be happier if she stays in Lanford Falls and never leaves or moves to a different town (let alone city or country like her dream was), and that literally the entire town will fall apart and stop thriving if she leaves. And you can kind of buy it in the movie version, that a small town banker really could be the thing to keep an entire town and family together. But the book doesn't actually want to get as dark and sad as the movie does, and as a result both the low point and the catharsis fall flat. I have read this kind of movie romance novel adaptation many times, and this one unfortunately both misses the emotional impact of the movie and also doesn't give us new characters who make me feel anything different. Bah. 

Grade: C

Book 3: Make the Season Bright by Ashley Herring Blake

Exes who reunite is one of my favorite romance novel tropes, and it pairs especially well with a Christmas romance, since it's so easy to dwell on the past during the season and people end up seeing old friends and family in a way that makes an unexpected reunion more likely. But the big pitfall is always whether the reason they broke up in the past still exists, and whether forgiveness etc. can actually be had. 

Unfortunately, for me this book really failed on that front. Charlotte and Brighton were childhood best friends who became high school sweethearts and got engaged their senior year of college, and then Brighton left Charlotte at the altar, and I never came close to thinking that Charlotte should forgive Brighton for it. The explanation that Charlotte was also sort of at fault for not seeing that Brighton was miserable living in New York doesn't make up for that, and they can't fix any of that with good sex. 

It's also the sort of romance novel where they exist basically in a vacuum - there's a queer social group of sorts, but apparently neither of them had any other friends aside from each other in high school or college, and it honestly all just made me kind of angry by the end. I had high hopes but the central conflict and resolution just fundamentally did not work for me, which makes it a hard sell in the end. 

Grade: C

Book 23: The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older

A book club book! This is a lesbian romance that's also a detective story that happens to take place on the rings of Jupiter? So there's a lot of genre tropes and narratives all kind of smashed together in it. The set up is that earth became uninhabitable, so humanity set up a space colony of sorts on the rings of Jupiter that's connected by all of these trains. Different settlements resemble different cultures or really settings of humanity, so you have one town which feels like the old west, another area that's basically a living zoo of all of the creatures and vegetation the colonists will want to bring back to Earth when it's inhabitable again, and then there's a university which feels very Oxbridge. The story is a fun noir involving two exes, even if I could have done with more development of why they broke up and why being together now makes sense. Looking forward to reading the next one in the series and finding out where it's going. 

Grade: B

Book 5: Proper English by KJ Charles

Okay, so you know how there are some books that you keep thinking that you should read but never do because the timing is wrong or whatever? Sometimes I end up not reading books because of SPITE, and I'm very glad in this case that I was finally able to let go of it.

This is a prequel to Think of England, one of my very favorite historical queer romances, and for years we had been hoping for a sequel about the main pairing in that book, and instead we got a prequel about a different (but also delightful) side pairing in that same book. And basically, it took reading all of the Will Darling trilogy which gives us some glimpses of the future for the ToE pairing for me to let that go and be able to enjoy reading about Pat and Fen's origin story. I can say both that I am delighted I was finally at a point where I could read this for them, because it is a romp and a half, and glad that I didn't force myself to read it when I was still feeling bitter, because I think I would have ended up ruining it for myself.

This is another mystery at an English country house at the turn of the twentieth century, and this time our focus is on Pat, who is for the first time trying to figure out what to do with her life now that her eldest brother has married and she's no longer needed to manage the family estate. While there she encounters Fen, the superficially silly fiancee of one of her oldest friends who is hosting the shooting party, a match she finds extremely puzzling. She teaches Fen how to shoot, and the two of them become closer as they all deal with the brother-in-law of their host, who is terrible in basically every possible way. 

Pat's voice is wonderful, and the relationship that develops between her and Fen is truly delightful. The sex could have been hotter, if I am honest, but overall I had a great time reading this. 

Grade: B

Book 13: Passing Strange by Ellen Klages

 If you are looking for a lovely queer women historical novella, with a nice bit of mystery and magical realism, all set within San Francisco's Chinatown in the early 1940s, then boy do I have a book for you. 

The novella starts out with a framing story that it took me a little bit to get into, but once I realized it was only the present day prologue to the main events which took place in the past, I sank into it. And by the end I loved it even more. It's a story about the community of queer people in San Francisco, and the kinds of lives they were able to create to exist as themselves, and it's also about magic, both metaphorical and literal. I don't really want to give away more of the plot than that because of how it slips through your fingers, but it's a love story and it's about taking big chances in order to be how you want to be, and I loved it. 

Grade: A

Book 10: The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite

 Listen, are you in the mood for a delightful gay regency romance between a widow who now runs the family printing press with her grown son, and a woman beekeeper who is always just on the right side of polite society? Because if so, hop to it! This is a pleasure to read, a slowburn that's also a really lovely exploration of how queer people carved a space in the world for themselves long before the first stirrings of an open gay rights movement. Agatha is a classic older love interest who isn't sure what her place in the world is after the loss of her husband, and Penelope manages to both seem carefree while actually being incredibly thoughtful and clear-eyed about how her life is possible. A book that is a very nice way to spend an afternoon with something hot to drink. 

Grade: B

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 17: The Music Box by Elaine Atwell

I had some major problems with this book. Which is a SHAME, because I really wanted to like it.

The central premise is definitely compelling: two lady spies both working for the Allies in WWII meet on a mission and fall in love (or at least lust) while thwarting evil! What's not to love? Well, a lot, as it turns out.

This book tries to be both too small and too big at the same time. It's definitely a novella, which is fine in the sense that the central relationship arc can be easily summed up in one sentence. But the backdrop of the early days of WWII feels far too big as a result--the length of the story doesn't fit the enormity of the historical setting, especially since the information each of the spies is attempting to obtain is hugely significant. The book also suffers from a flaw in its overall POV; the reader obviously knows how WWII ended, but no one in the story could possibly know that. It throws off the whole tension of the story (and my ability to engage with it) when characters in the book are behaving as if they know that the Allies would eventually defeat the Axis powers, which was not at all the case.

This becomes even less excusable when the information the spies obtain is so significant that it would change the entire course of the war, but the book makes no effort to actually demonstrate that it would result in quicker victory for the Allies. If anything, it's entirely likely that the new information could have prolonged or even permanently swung the course of the war in the favor of the Axis powers. The suggested change in history is too serious to be treated so lightly. Alternate histories can be fascinating, but they only work if the author actually works through the potential impact of a change, and this was done so casually in a novella that's clearly not built to tell that kind of alternate history that it made the entire story fall apart for me. It also made it much harder for me to handwave other historical details and moments in the novel which felt suspect to me; suddenly the entire book was clearly just a house of cards, and I didn't want to play anymore.

So in the end, this was a novella with lots of elements I love, and none of the necessary execution to make the actual story work. Bah.  

Grade: D