Book 50: Winter Wonderland by Heidi Cullinan

The final book in the Christmas Bears Trilogy, this one focuses on Paul, who's the last of the three best friends to still be single, even though he's the one who's wanted a relationship the most. This is partly because his family doesn't approve of his interest in men, so he's always wanted to create his own found family.

He initially dismisses the romantic overtures of Kyle, a nurse at the assisted living facility in town, because Kyle is 25 and Paul is in his late thirties. But it's really because he's not sure if he deserves love.

This was the weakest of the three stories for me. I like Paul, but of the three best friends in the group, he has always felt like the one who had the thinnest back story. It's obvious from the beginning that he and Arthur should never be together in the long run, but it's never clear where they are emotionally - was Paul in love with him? Were they both just settling? If so, why did Paul suddenly want more? The longer the series goes on, the less believable the relationships end up feeling, because they just don't actually behave like real people do. I wanted a happily ever after for Paul, but Kyle feels like the obvious option only because he's the last single gay guy in a town that's quite small but seems to be the next Provincetown. The book does acknowledge that, at least, and there are a bunch of small town initiatives that reminded me a lot of the Harvest Festival in Parks & Recreation, which I enjoyed. But unfortunately the central romance doesn't quite land.

Grade: C 

Book 49: Sleigh Ride by Heidi Cullinan

The second book in the Christmas Bears Trilogy, Sleigh Ride focuses on Arthur. After Paul moves out because Arthur refuses to commit to being in a real relationship with him, Arthur is suddenly alone for the first time in ten years. He's convinced that he's fine on his own, but his mother is determined to see him partnered up, and throws him in the path of the town librarian, Gabriel.

Gabriel is everything you'd imagine a small town librarian to be: prim and a bit proper and wonderful with children. But underneath that slightly prudish exterior, he's always wanted a boyfriend who would take him apart, both physically and emotionally. He doesn't like Gabriel at first, but could that dislike be hiding a burning attraction?

I'll be honest, the first sex scene between the two of them is just on the edge of being too rough, too soon for me. And I think that the author knows that, because the sex scene stops in the middle of it so they can have a discussion about consent that feels like it's there for the benefit of the reader, rather than because it's something the characters would actually do in the moment. Even stranger though is that once they actually start dating properly, and have established enough trust and knowledge of each other that the kind of rough BDSM scene play they engaged in right off the bat could be hot AND safe, they suddenly don't actually have very much kinky sex at all. Things fade to black, or are discussed but then not actually done, and so as a reader it didn't really deliver on its promise. If part of what makes them work as a couple is their sexual compatibility regarding kink, I want to actually see that successfully kinky sex. I want negotiated kink, but the talking and the action seemed to occur in the wrong order in this book. I wanted it to work better for me than it actually did.

Grade: C 

Book 48: Let It Snow by Heidi Cullinan

I had been planning on saving the next three books for November, both because they're Christmas themed and also because I knew they'd be fairly light and easy reads and I figured I'd need those a week before the election. But then my weekend ended up being more stressful than I had anticipated, and I needed some Christmas in July to take my mind off real life.

What I've come to think of as the Christmas Bears Trilogy starts with a blizzard that results in a lost traveler from out of town staying in a cabin with strangers and discovering love. Frankie is a stylist from the Twin Cities who ends up stranded in a small town near the Canadian border. He first sees three burly loggers in a town diner and assumes they're all prejudiced rednecks who would never accept a swishy guy like him, no matter how much they look like a lot of gay men's fantasies. But when he finds shelter in their well-stocked cabin outside of town after he drives off the road to avoid hitting a moose, he discovers that Marcus, Arthur and Paul are exactly that fantasy.

Arthur and Paul are in a tempestuous fuck buddy relationship, but Marcus is single after discovering that his boyfriend of three years had been cheating on him. He returned home to Logan, the small town where all three of them grew up, to lick his wounds and spend time with his mother, whose health is declining. Marcus is gruff with Frankie, but shockingly it's not because he dislikes him, it's because he reminds him of his ex!

This book has one too many moments of people doing dumb things because they're afraid of love, and in general people often behaved in certain ways seemingly only because the plot required them to so, but I did really like Marcus and Frankie together, and it was definitely the kind of book I needed to read this weekend.

Grade: B 

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

Book 44: Sole Support by Kaje Harper

This is the kind of book that would probably make a lot of people happy but dealt with a topic that I just didn't want to read about in romance. It's one part two internet nerds find love together (I'm in!) and one part dealing with a parent's decline due to dementia (I'm out). The romance between Mike and Kellen was lovely and pretty recognizable, for the most part, although neither of them really felt their age to me; they each seemed much closer to early twenties rather than late thirties or early forties. Part of that is probably due to the fact that Mike had never had any kind of relationship before, but I didn't really buy it. And 90% of the drama or tension in the book was due not to Kellen's mother's failing health, but his complete inability to communicate with anyone in his life about it and accept help. I am not suggesting that it is easy in a situation like that to reach out to people; I know it's not. But my problem with it was that it felt like merely a plot point in a romance, rather than something bigger and more important. I don't think that romances can only be about trivial problems and must avoid serious emotional issues altogether, but the way this book dealt with it didn't work for me, unfortunately.

Grade: C